The Purpose of this blog

Your task on this blog is to write a brief summary of what we learned in class today. Include enough detail so that someone who was ill or missed the class can catch up with what they missed. Over the course of the term, these 'class scribe' posts will grow to be a guide for the course, written by students for students.

With each post ask yourself the following questions:
1) Is this good enough for our guide?
2) Will your post enable someone who wasnt here to catch up?
3) Would a graphic/video/link help to illustrate what we have learned?


Wednesday 29 September 2010

22nd September 2010 - Chaucer Contexts


Middle Ages had a completely different regime. The church was the greatest power of all. Many may ask why?

The Renaissance era lacked scientific knowledge, rational way of thinking. As, people could not explain things by using science, other methods were used to satisfy the desire to know which include religion. Therefore, religion became the most dominant institution of all as it did 'have knowledge' of everything and what is the most important could promise the holy enlightenment. If you only followed the rules...

Naturally, as all the regimes that our humankind has seen this was corrupt as well. Theoretically it was the most suitable idea for the individuals in these times, on the other hand practically it became well known as a 'greed machine'.

Let's look at all the different roles in the church!

GOD
POPE
ARCHBISHOPS
DEANS
BISHOPS
PRIESTS/ VICARS
PARDONERS
GENERAL PUBLIC/BELIEVERS


From this it can be seen that the church had a major system set up. However, as there were many roles within the church some of the individuals were really far distances away from their more powerful legitimate authority. Sadly, this caused general public being abused. Let's focus on pardoners. What is a pardoner? Pardoner was a part of a catholic church with a role to forgive people's sins. Despite all of this, it turned more into a business! Pardoners abused their powers, usurped the power of priests, gained a reputation for being greedy as they collected money from people for cleansing their souls from all the sins! Many got titles of being liars. For instance, if we explore pages 13-14 in Chaucer's 'The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale' many of the negative characteristics can be seen. Pardoner was described to have 'Swiche glaringe eyen' which presents greediness. Also, Chaucer suggests that they do not carry any relics, instead its 'pigges bones'!. Please read pages 13 - 14 and think about the language used about pardoners and get all the quotes about pardoner on one sheet of paper.

Consider certain ideas:
  • What was Chaucer's motivation?
  • Why did he write this text in this manner?
  • Did he want to inform people?






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