'the Pilgrimage Itself Is, After All, Was A Social As Well As Religious Event'. What Evidence Do We Find In The 'General Prologue' To The Canterbury Tales, That Chaucer Wished To Examine The Social Reality Of His Time From Many Different Perspect...
...not only provides a view of medieval society from a religious perspective but also from a secular view. The reality of medieval society however is that the two were not clearly independent of each other, you could hardly speak of one without making some implication on the other, for example common law and religious morality would have been one and the same. The clergy people of the time would also have been somewhat privileged and was certainly one way of climbing the social ladder and achieving a higher status in society as well as being educated. Educated clergy often ran the businesses of the nobles for profit and also were employed in civil service positions. Indeed it might have been hard to separate some of clergy from the wealthy higher classes in regards to lavish lifestyles and appetites for the worldly goods that life had to offer.
Despite clerical indulgences and lack of moral character the Christian ideology was dominant as an influence on society even if the proclaimers of the faith did not appear to be influenced by its ideals but rather worldly ideals. Chaucer' main social commentary is in regard to the aggressive attitudes and unstoppable surge of wealth to the middle classes of society and their aspirations to not just be wealthy but also what was thought of to be sophisticated.
The Canterbury Tales was written during the Late Middle Ages, towards the end of the fourteenth century. The structure of medieval society was hierarchical with three layers or estates that were dependent on each other, they were clerics, knights and peasants. Clerics taught and defended the Catholic faith while the peasants worked the land to produce goods and food. The knights which were part of the aristocracy defended the aristocracy, clergy and peasants alike. However after the devastation of the Black Death the structure of society started to change with the rising...
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