canterbury tales essay
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In many aspects of literature, authors portray their ideas through their characters using a universally known concept. Through his characters, Chaucer expresses that the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales harbour worldly vanities rather than a hope for spiritual replenishment. Chaucer uses the concept of the chain of being and demonstrates that the pilgrims are focused on the values of the human world rather than the divine world by comparing the two worlds.
The opening lines of the Canterbury Tales state the goal of the pilgrimage while introducing the concept of the chain of being. A pilgrimage, a religious journey, intends to visit shrines in distant holy lands. Chaucer's pilgrims are traveling to Canterbury to visit the relics of St. Thomas Becket to thank the martyr for having helped them when they were in need (17). The pilgrims travel "to Canterbury with full devout corage," implying that the pilgrims are very devoted to the religious journey (22). Chaucer then connects the natural and the human worlds through the concept of the chain of being, a hierarchy of increasingly important beings as approaching God. The nature images in the opening lines express a cyclic pattern as they are presented in order of growth from roots to flowers to crops...