Wanderers – Page 2

I want to start this blog entry by restating the plot of the overall story in The Canterbury Tales. There is this group, full of some pretty interesting yet heavily morally flawed people, on a religious pilgrimage that is supposed to, in theory, bring them closer to God so that they may become better people in his name. In the party, there is a corrupt, money-loving Friar, a Widow has had five husbands, and a Somnour, who is cartoonishly scary and evil, to name a few. In many respects, the General Prologue is like the lead up to the joke. Before Chaucer can say, “two guys walk into a bar,” he has to specify that this bar is actually a brothel and at least one of these guys is the most corrupt religious figure that can be put into words. We are looking at you, Frere.

All jokes aside, the portrayals of the church, just in the prologue, cast a harsh light onto the Catholic Church at the time. In this time period, it was common for the Church to preach this idea of penance for sins to lessen the time spent in purgatory. This penance was usually in the form of an amount of money given to the Church, possibly right into the pocket of the clergy. Chaucer’s descriptions of the Church officials, and especially the very dry language used in these descriptions, really help to show us today how corrupt the church was in medieval times, and how the Church’s corruption was so widespread and such common knowledge that Chaucer can even joke about it and expect his readers to fully understand the joke as well.

Overall, The General Prologue sets the stage for a revealing satirical novel discussing the lives and society in the medieval time period.

In class on Wednesday, we learned all about allegory and that the entirety of The Faerie Queene is filled with different allegories. One of the big allegories of the tale is the character The Redcrosse Knight, the Knight of Holiness. The main allegory associated with the Redcrosse Knight is that he is representative of the whole of Christianity and its substituent elements. He also represents the individual Catholic on the true journey for the Search for Holiness, while being armed in the armor of the faith of Christ. His traveling companion, Una, is also important. She is representative of the truth, which is what her name means as well and can be seen as an embodiment of the Truth which must be discovered by Redcrosse in order to be a completely true Christian. This can be seen as important when you view the whole of England at this time, the Reformation was taking great hold of the country which had torn down the power of the Catholic Church in the country. Throughout each of the first two books of “The Faerie Queene,” there are many different enemies who must be defeated by Redcrosse in order to keep them from separating Una from Redcrosse. Some of these bad people include Error, who represents the lies put out by the Roman Catholic Church against The Queen and the Anglican Church, Archimago, who is an allegory for the falsehood that was Catholicism, and Sansfoy/Duessa, who is a representation of the lack of faith according to the Catholic Church. As a whole, the character of The Redcrosse Knight is a representation of a Catholic during and directly after the Reformation and how they must go on their own journey in order to stay true to the faith they have. Faith is a dynamic thing, it is not constant; on the contrary, faith is ever-changing and will adapt to your current surroundings and situation.