The Canterbury tales : a study of certain of the characters and their tales as an expression of Chaucer's concern regarding abuses among the priesthood and religious orders during the 14th century
type: CreativeWork
description: When one considers The Canterbury Tales, which is generally accepted as being Chaucer's most important work, as a whole, one encounters two facts which immediately suggest an interest in the religious and ecclesiastical states and a deep concern resulting from the prevalence of abuses in the lives of these representatives of the Church. The first of these facts is Chaucer's use of the concept of a pilgrimage as framework for his tales. One cannot, of course, completely discount the suggestion that the poet's use of this framework could have been motivated by the fact that, in the fourteenth century at any rate, only a pilgrimage could have provided a socially acceptable dimension for keeping so diverse a group of people together for long enough to tell their tales. However, the fact that a pilgrimage was fundamentally a religious act was, I feel, a more important consideration to the poet in his choice of this particular framework for his tales. Baldwin, writing about the significance of pilgrimages in the middle ages says: "Pilgrimage was a well-established feature of European society, it was a journey of devotion to a holy shrine. At first simply a pious act, pilgrimage had, in the course of time, been adopted by the Church as a form of canonical penance." John Norton-Smith sees a probable connection between the poet's Retractation and his choice of a pilgrimage-framework when he says: "the biologically based metaphor of the pilgrimage of life and the final spiritual resignation of the author suggests a powerful tendency towards an acceptance of the orthodox 'other-worldly' religious view of human activity". A pilgrimage was, therefore, primarily a penitential activity designed to turn the mind and the heart to the love of God. Since the abuses of which the religious and clergy were accused were, for the most part, the result of a weakening of the life of penance and self denial and a turning away from divine love, the poet's choice of a pilgrimage as the framewor…
abstract: When one considers The Canterbury Tales, which is generally accepted as being Chaucer's most important work, as a whole, one encounters two facts which immediately suggest an interest in the religious and ecclesiastical states and a deep concern resulting from the prevalence of abuses in the lives of these representatives of the Church. The first of these facts is Chaucer's use of the concept of a pilgrimage as framework for his tales. One cannot, of course, completely discount the suggestion that the poet's use of this framework could have been motivated by the fact that, in the fourteenth century at any rate, only a pilgrimage could have provided a socially acceptable dimension for keeping so diverse a group of people together for long enough to tell their tales. However, the fact that a pilgrimage was fundamentally a religious act was, I feel, a more important consideration to the poet in his choice of this particular framework for his tales. Baldwin, writing about the significance of pilgrimages in the middle ages says: "Pilgrimage was a well-established feature of European society, it was a journey of devotion to a holy shrine. At first simply a pious act, pilgrimage had, in the course of time, been adopted by the Church as a form of canonical penance." John Norton-Smith sees a probable connection between the poet's Retractation and his choice of a pilgrimage-framework when he says: "the biologically based metaphor of the pilgrimage of life and the final spiritual resignation of the author suggests a powerful tendency towards an acceptance of the orthodox 'other-worldly' religious view of human activity". A pilgrimage was, therefore, primarily a penitential activity designed to turn the mind and the heart to the love of God. Since the abuses of which the religious and clergy were accused were, for the most part, the result of a weakening of the life of penance and self denial and a turning away from divine love, the poet's choice of a pilgrimage as the framewor…
author: Pearton, E
language: eng
date published: 1979
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:23:45Z
provider: University of Cape Town
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Department of English Language and Literature

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13822