Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales contain his signature challenges and retellings of the popular literary genres of his time. With each tale, Chaucer takes a common genre and follows its general conventions to tell a story perfectly appropriate to the genre, until he makes an alteration that stands out from the otherwise well-constructed style. But is Chaucer doing more than simply playing with his readers' expectations? In addition to providing a joke or shock value to his tales, Chaucer may be commenting on the genre in which he only partially participates. Perhaps he is commenting on the topic of writing in general, or perhaps life as he and his readers knew it. It is fair to say that Chaucer never wrote a story for frivolous purposes, indeed, behind every challenge made to the tradition of the genre there was the intent to draw the reader's attention to a particular issue or to irony. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay One framework through which Chaucer's literary intent can be addressed is the question of epistemology, or the study of knowledge, or how "one knows what one knows." Chaucer's method of genre-bending serves to deconstruct traditional genres by drawing attention to their typical characteristics. In doing so, Chaucer questions the authority of popular texts and, by extension, class, romance, and religion. For example, despite what popular stories of the time had to say, Chaucer realized that knights were not always chivalrous (or perhaps more accurately, that chivalry itself was being misrepresented), and his stories reflected that awareness. Fundamentally, Chaucer asks how the writers and readers of such texts can take anything for granted in an ever-changing world. One story in which Chaucer makes implicit use of his critical method is "The Prioress's Tale". Told from the point of view of a rather strange and fashionable nun, “The Prioress's Tale” is told in the style of a “miracle story,” a genre very popular in England and the church of the time. In her prologue, the Prioress announces that she intends to tell a story in praise of Christ and His Mother, the Blessed Virgin. He then proceeds to tell the story of a young martyr. In Asia, an innocent boy is killed while singing a song he learned about the Blessed Virgin. A group of Jews, greatly offended by the boy's song, cut his throat. Once his mother discovers her son's body, however, her song continues. Thus, through great faith, a miracle occurs. The Prioress, so moved by her own story, tells it as any other miracle story would be told: with great humility, declaring herself perhaps not educated enough to tell such a weighty story, and in line with the general style of an outspoken person, "narrative miraculous “factual”, as if this story had really happened. At the end of the story she is even overwhelmed by emotions. However, several subtle problems emerge in the descriptions of the Prioress in the prologue that distinguish her tale from a typical miracle story. As with every tale included in Chaucer's masterpiece, the most important elements to remember are the narrator, the relation of the tale and manner of speaking to the narrator's intent, the intent of the Chaucer alter ego, and the actual authorial intent by Chaucer. Since the alter ego Chaucer tends to be represented as a rather dull individual - that is, rather naive and frank - we can assume that Chaucer the author is using his alter ego's frankness in describing his characters andits characters. their way of telling stories to make indirect observations that the author Chaucer could not describe clearly (lest attention and criticism be directed towards him). Through her alter ego's tale of the Prioress, we begin to understand her lack of knowledge, her simplicity, the ironic position she holds, and the deeper meaning these traits add to her miracle tale. First, the Prioress is an unusually elegant nun, as reflected in her dress, jewelry, and bracelet described in the general prologue. She is very sentimental towards her little dogs and worries about the pitiful mice caught in the traps. Her arguably excessive sensitivity towards such creatures is at odds with her social role, as she is effectively a nun and therefore should be more concerned with poverty, disease, and other larger problems rather than the irrelevant matters she is concerned about. . Furthermore, as mentioned before, she is not a particularly experienced woman: graphic detail. Why would the Prioress do such a thing? Is it because he revels in a martyr's story, believing that a more gruesome murder makes the next miracle seem even greater? The idea wouldn't be far-fetched, but it's still rare in miracle stories. By writing from the perspective of an uneducated woman, is Chaucer mocking the concept of abuse of the Prioress? Are his fear and contempt for the world (and for the Jews) so great that he chooses to describe the worst violence he can think of to glorify the innocent boy-martyr? As with the casting of the Jews as villains, the Prioress's choices regarding the depiction of violence in the story only bring to the surface the alleged narrator's lack of perspective and authority: she clearly does not know what she is talking about. The Prioress's slightly excessive "revelation" of the horrific violence thus represents simultaneously her attempt to gain credibility with her audience and Chaucer's attempt to point out its total lack. However, another noteworthy element in the Prioress's tale is the extent to which the young martyr has much in common with the Prioress. A simple boy, the martyr does not understand the words he sings, other than the fact that they concern the Blessed Virgin, which therefore makes them worthy of being known and constantly sung. Her song ends only after an abbot of a nearby monastery takes a grain from the child's tongue - just as, it should be noted, when taking the Eucharist from a priest (Heffernan 8) - except in the story of the prioress an the priest receives the “greyn” (VII 671) from a boy:comeuppance: This story is unusual in two ways. The first unusual contribution that Chaucer makes to this otherwise dark and vengeful tale of wish fulfillment is his lengthy discussion of public office and the role one must play within the position he has been given. . Bryant comments that such long dialogue seems a little out of place, especially in what is supposed to be a short story about a bad man being punished for his ill will on earth (2). The story does not move at all quickly towards the punishment of the summoner; rather, it begins with a full description of the protagonist's role in the archdeacon's court. The tale then goes on to recount a conversation between the summoner and the demon (a bailiff) that reveals the pressures of the offices they hold. Some scholars argue that the tale's analysis of the actions of government and ecclesiastical officials, "an original addition to Chaucer's treatment", probably "owes much to the poet's personal experience of the pressures of:. 2009.