The Canterbury Tales

The pilgrims of The Canterbury Tales love to accuse each other—and, if they’re the Pardoner, themselves—of rank hypocrisy. Their behavior gives some credence to those accusations, and the religious figures in particular often fall a little short of their ideals. Monks supposedly living in holy poverty look awfully well-fed, celibates have an eye for the ladies, and softhearted nuns relish the grim details of exactly how deep a martyr’s throat was slit and how nasty the cesspit he was thrown into was. The different textures of the stories throw the contradiction between the ideal and the real into sharp relief. Stories of impossible virtue (like the Man of Law’s tale of the pious Constance) interweave with grotesque stories of flatulence-filled vengeance (like the Miller’s or the Summoner’s).

Perhaps there’s a midpoint to be found in stories like the Wife of Bath’s autobiographical prologue, or (strangely) in the Knight’s romance of squabbling-but-chivalrous friends. In different ways, both storytellers humanely deal with the mess of life: the Wife of Bath in her belief that “not every dish and vessel’s made of gold,/Some are of wood, yet earn their master’s praise,/God calls His folk to Him in many ways” (261), and