The Monk is the next pilgrim the narrator describes. Extremely handsome, he loves hunting and keeps many horses. He is an outrider at his monastery (he looks after the monastery’s business with the external world), and his horse’s bridle can be heard jingling in the wind as clear and loud as a church bell. The Monk is aware that the rule of his monastic order discourages monks from engaging in activities like hunting, but he dismisses such strictures as worthless. The narrator says that he agrees with the Monk: why should the Monk drive himself crazy with study or manual labor? The fat, bald, and well-dressed Monk resembles a prosperous lord.
The Monk - Most monks of the Middle Ages lived in monasteries according to the Rule of Saint Benedict, which demanded that they devote their lives to “work and prayer.” This Monk cares little for the Rule; his devotion is to hunting and eating. He is large, loud, and well clad in hunting boots and furs."
he Monk's Tale is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.
The tale is a collection of seventeen short stories, exempla, on the theme of tragedy. The tragedies of the following people are included in the tale: Lucifer, Adam, Samson, Hercules, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Zenobia, Pedro of Castile, Peter I of Cyprus, Bernabò Visconti, Ugolino of Pisa, Nero, Holofernes, Antiochus, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Croesus.
The majority of the tale is thought to have been written before the rest of the Canterbury Tales with only the four most recent people within the tale added when it was given to the Monk to tell. It may have be written in the 1370s shortly after Chaucer returned from a trip to Italy but the tragedy of Bernabò Visconti must have been written after 1385 for this is when he died. The basic structure for the tale can be found in Giovanni Boccaccio's Concerning the Falls of Illustrious Men and the tale of Ugolino of Pisa comes from Dante.
The monk in his prologue claims to have a hundred of these stories in his cell but the Knight stops him after only seventeen saying that they have had enough sadness. The order of the stories within the tale is different in several early manuscripts and if the more modern stories were at the end of his tale it may be that the Knight did not interrupt merely through boredom. As it says of the Knight in line 51 of the General Prologue:"
You can read The Monk's Tale, which is actually a series of tales and is fairly long (in modern English) at the third link.
2007-09-23 15:02:07
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answer #1
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answered by johnslat 7
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