Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales: Rhetoric and Gender in Marriage

<p>In the Middle Ages, marriage represented a shift in the balance of power for both men and women. Struggling to define what constitutes the ideal marriage in medieval society, the marriage group of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales attempts to reconcile the ongoing battle for sovereignty between husband and wife. Existing hierarchies restricted women; therefore, marriage fittingly presented more obstacles for women. Chaucer creates the dynamic personalities of the Wife of Bath, the Clerk and the Merchant to debate marriage intelligently while citing their experiences within marriage in their prologues. The rhetorical device of ethos plays a significant role for the pilgrims. By first establishing their authority, each pilgrim sets out to provide his or her audience with a tale of marriage that is most correct. Chaucer's work as a social commentary becomes rhetorically complex with varying levels of ethos between Chaucer the author, his tale tellers and their characters.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year

2007

Author dc:creator

• Marcotte, Andrea

Contributors dc:contributor

• Sturges, Robert; Marti, Kevin
• Shenk, Robert

• Geoffrey Chaucer
• The Canterbury Tales
• rhetoric
• gender
• ethos
• marriage
• Wife of Bath
• Clerk
• Merchant
• Arts and Humanities
• English Language and Literature
• Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/591

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.uno.edu:td-1591