I wrote my paper on the background of the whole Canterbury Tales since we read a story from it which was the wife of bath which I blogged about yesterday. Doing my research I found some interesting things about the very diverse section of a bunch of tales and The Wife of Bath in particular is the best of the best. I found that out of all the many tales, the reason The Wife of Bath is one the most impressive is because of how full its story line is compared to the rest of the tales. Out of the very different plots and characters in the Canterbury Tales, The Wife of Bath has a little bit of everything to make it great such as a righteous knight, a long journey (the infamous year and day), fairies and secular minded characters. These things are found throughout all of the tales which make the whole collection good but also makes The Wife of Bath Stand out. That was what I read about the story; I personally thought they all had a lot different aspects to them that was specific for the particular story and not found much in all the other tales. Besides, all the stories are about journeys from a place going to Canterbury and are set in King Arthur’s Court and most share the same characters so I didn’t really see how this one is so highly recognized. Maybe the fact that I have only read this one and partially looked in to skimming through a hand full of other tales plays apart on why I don’t see the value of the work, but like I said as of right now, knowing what I know about the whole collection they are all about the same to me.
I personally hate prologues because I think they can add that into the story instead of giving me two different things to read and they’re usually not even the same type of language or feeling of literature. Nevertheless, the majority of Canterbury stories had to have a prologue as far as I know because I have yet to find one not having one, but the prologue for this story is a lot different than the others. Chaucer took twice as much time preparing the story to be read in the prologue because it is twice as long as the story given to us. People think that Chaucer put a lot of work into making this story and the characters in it as well. He got the ideas from over half his stories from an older work written by Giovanni Boccaccio. I wonder if this tale is part of that percentage because he gets a lot of credit for creating this incredible, strong, female character and placing her in the story in a way it makes sense and is acceptable to the time era and people hearing the stories. No doubt in my mind that he deserves credit for all he had done, but was it all on him? As far as we know, that character could have been the exact same or even more complex before Chaucer got to it and translate it to what his people could read.
Not every tale takes place in Arthur's court. In fact, if I recall correctly, her's is the only one. However, I do agree that her tale isn't the most remarkable or memorable. It is a well-contained story with an obvious beginning, middle and end (a trait that some other tales lack). But to say it is the best strikes me as odd.
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