Reading Diary Week 12: The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales

The Unknown Bride (Told by the Wife of Bath)

A knight is in search of what women want most. He has one year to figure out the answer or the queen will kill him. His year is up and he sees some women to ask. When he gets there, all of the women have disappeared except one old wretched looking one is still there. So he asks her and she says she will give him the answer if after she does he will do the first thing she asks of him. He agrees and she whispers the answer.

When the time came for him to present his answer to the queen, he told her that what women want most is to “rule their husbands.” I died laughing at this point. After his life was spared by knowing the answer, the old lady said the favor she wanted him to do was for him to take her as his wife. He didn’t want to but because he promised he did. He was very upset about it though. One day she approached him about his attitude, and then she appeared beautiful all of a sudden and they lived happily ever after.

The Story of the Summoner (Told by the Friar)

Basically a summoner meets a demon. The demon talks about how he can change form and lives in hell. Then they were going around together and trying to screw people over, eventually the fiend(demon), was able to get the man to accidentally give himself away to the devil while he was trying to take money from an old poor woman. Serves the summoner right for trying to cheat people of what little riches they had.

The Promise of Dorigen (The Franklin’s Tale)

So there is a husband and a wife. He leaves and she is forever waiting for him to return. She is so upset that he is gone and fears he will never return. Friends and family try to comfort her but nothing works. One day a man approaches her and basically says that he wants her and will do anything for her. She denied him for she was very faithful to her husband. The man went home and prayed to the gods that he would somehow win Dorigen over. Eventually Dorigen’s husband came home from sea and the two were extremely happy to be reunited. So the man that loved her from afar and his brother went to Orleans in search of magic so that he might win Dorigen over. Earlier Dorigen had promised the man that when the rocks on the coast had disappeared that she would leave her husband for the man. Well the man found a magician in Orleans who accomplished this task, so now Dorigen had to keep her promise. The man’s name was Aurelius, and so Dorigen went to him after telling the terrible news to her husband whom she loved dearly. When Aurelius saw how faithful Dorigen was to her promise and how upset the two lovers were at having to be separated, he let her go back to her husband. When Aurelius went back to pay the magician, and he told him the story, the magician thought that Aurelius was such a great man that he didn’t make him pay his 1,000 pound debt back. Everyone was happy even though Aurelius didn’t get what he wanted.

The Revelers (The Pardoner’s Tale)

Three drunken men decided that they would kill death. Idiots. They come across an old man wrapped in tarnished clothes and the man tells his story. When they go to kill death they find a ton of gold under a tree. They decide to then have one man go and get them food, while two stand watch of the gold. Then as night comes, they plan on taking the gold to their houses so that way no one will see them with it and accuse them of stealing. When they separated each one devised a plan to kill each other in order to get more gold for themselves. It ended up that each of their plans ended up working and everyone ended up dead. One was stabbed and two were poisoned. They all ended up dying so death technically won. 

Little Hugh (The Prioress’s Tale)

This was a sad story about a little boy who loved the Virgin Mary. He would sing her song all day long and because of this the Jews of the town got mad and killed the little boy by slitting his throat and throwing him down a pit. However, the boy continued to sing the song even though his throat was slit. He was found and taken to a church. It was there he told them that he talked to Mary and she told him that he could sing until someone took a grain off of his tongue and then he would go away to heaven with her. So the priest took the grain off the boys tongue and he died and went to heaven. This is a sad but good story.

The Cock, the Hen, and the Fox (The Nun’s Priest’s Tale)

This was one of the more confusing stories. It involved dreams and even murder. It continuously skipped around and because of that I found it very hard to follow. They were trying to find out if the dreams had significance or not. Then a fox tricks a cock and is going to eat it but then the cock tricks the fox and gets away. It was an odd and confusing story with a ton of detail. I don’t particularly like this story.

The Priest who learned to be a Philosopher (The Canon’s Yeoman Tale)

Basically in this story a canon makes a fool out of a priest by making the priest believe that he can create silver plates with a recipe that the canon sells to him. The canon gets off with the priests money and the priest is completely oblivious to the trick.