Chaucer's Social Politics Essay Outline (not in outline form just yet)

INTRO:

• Social classes have been around for a really long time
• In many instances, people can be against social order
• Chaucer seems to not like social order that much
• THESIS: Although Chaucer says that he is conservative and reverent, he hints in his work that he can be progressive and irreverent towards social order.

POINT 1: I think Chaucer is progressive about the social hierarchy but doesn't speak it out loud rather showing it through the characters of the different stories.

•    Chaucer agreed with the monk on being progressive?
•   "He took the modern world's more spacious way" (7).
• "That is to say a monk is out of his cloister that was a text he held not worth an oyster; and I agreed and said his views were sound" (8).
•  nagging wives want their husbands to do better (hint as raising social class) because they know that their work is better than the average men's for their social class 
•  "Their wisdom would have justified a plan to make each one of them an alderman they had the capital and revenue, besides their wives declared it was their due" (13).
• Wife of Bath description= progressive?
• She seems to be very successful and skilled compared to the normal idea of women in this time period.
• "In making cloth she showed so great a bent she bettered those of Ypres and of Ghent" (15).

POINT 2: I think Chaucer is irreverent because he has hidden sarcastic points about almost every character but he tries to hide it with a double meaning

• The Squire: not very squire-y "Of time, in hope to win his lady's grace. He was embroidered like a meadow bright and full of freshest flowers, red and white. Singing he was, or fluting all the day" (5).
• Yeoman: Doesn't really seem like a Yeoman "He was a proper forester, I guess" (6).

POINT 3: On the outside Chaucer likes to portray that he isn't progressive.

• In the case of anyone picking up the double meanings in his stories, he gives disclaimers
• I'm not that smart so don't be mad if I'm wrong: "Further I beg you to forgive it me if I neglect the order and degree and what is due to rank in what I've planned. I'm short of wit as you will understand.
• I'm just repeating what was said originally: "I speak plainly and with no concealings and give account of all their words and dealings, using their very phrases as they fell" (22).
• Obscures the lower class to hide their talent in their jobs with altercations in physical features
• The Cook: "Made good thick soup and bake a tasty pie. But what a pity - so it seemed to me, that he should have an ulcer on his knee" (13).
• The Reeve(cunning): "A better hand at bargains than his lord, he had grown rich and had a store of treasure" (19). "The reeve was old and choleric and thin " (19).
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