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Geoffrey Chaucer's Works, Especially The Canterbury Tales, Are Also Mainly ...



Geoffrey Chaucer's works, especially The Canterbury Tales, are also mainly evaluated in terms of traditional interpretations with the exception of some researchers. For instance, Salter (1962) turns away from the conventional perspective and observes various aspects of Knight's Tale in integrity. Spearing (1985) suggests that we must recognise in Chaucer, wherever we look, a contempt for romance of all kinds" (p.36), proposing to analyse Chaucer's works more profoundly, but not only through the romantic perspective. The similar viewpoint is maintained by Frank (1972) who values The Canterbury Tales for its narrative elements and philosophical issues rather than for its genre of romance. Chaucer's Miller's Tale is usually regarded as the tale that does not reveal any philosophical or moral context, but such biased vision decreases the importance of this tale and of the whole Canterbury Tales. Despite the fact that Miller's Tale and The Wife of Bath portray some immoral actions of the characters, they nevertheless provide important cultural and social facts as to the medieval era, especially in regard to gender relations (Owst, 1961; Dalarun, 1992; Laskaya, 1995; Helmholz, 1974). Although Knight's Tale is often criticised for its controversy and irrelevance, Spearing (1985) opposes such interpretation, stating that Knight's Tale has classical simplicity and rationality of structure [with] no narrative complications, no irrelevancies, none of that procedure by digressions that is the typical method of medieval romance (p.39). Actually, the controversies of Knight's Tale are crucial for the narration, because they reveal the poet's attempts to interpret every issue from two opposite sides. Minnis (1982) evaluates the Christian context of Knight's Tale, stating that Chaucer's characters are benighted pagans, wasting their devotions on false gods. The implicit Christian standard in The Knight's Tale is thereby indicated (p.135). In view of the recent spread of feminism, Chaucer's The Wife of Bath is widely analysed through the feministic perspective (Oberempt, 1976); for instance, Aers (1980) treats Alisoun as the first female character that rebels against patriarchy and uncovers the existing social realm of the medieval era. However, despite a variety of criticism in regard to Keats and Chaucer, the researchers and scholars rarely analyse the issue of youth and age in the works of these poets.

3 Methodology
The present research utilises two theoretical research methods a comparative approach and a qualitative method. The comparative approach is applied to uncover differences and similarities in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, Miller's Tale, The Wife of Bath and Keats' poems The Eve of St. Agnes and Ode to a Nightingale.

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