Differences Between The Faulins Tale And The Canterbury...

If you and 29 of your friends went on a trip and all told stories, whose story would win? In the case of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, this was the question at hand. The Canterbury Tales explains the religious pilgrimage of many individuals to Canterbury, and the stories they told along the way. With them traveled a Host, who served as the judge of the contest. He determined who the winner would be based off of how clean the story was and if the story was morally sound or not. The prize for winning the storytelling contest was a free dinner. Based on the rules set by the Host, The Franklin would have won the contest. The first criteria that each story must meet, is that it must be clean. Both of these tales reflect on†¦show more content†¦Even when Arveragus has to be away from Dorigen, their love survives as well as their faithfulness. â€Å"The Merchant’s Tale† on the the other hand is not so clean. This story depicts the marriage of an o ld knight named January, and his young and beautiful wife, May. Throughout the entirety of the story many aspects are not clean. The first example of this is shown the night of the wedding. We are in holy wedlock, and we may. And blessed be the yoke that we are in For nothing we can do will count as sin. A man is not a sinner with his wife, He cannot hurt himself with his own knife; We have the law’s permission thus to play.’ And so he laboured till the break of day. (372-373) January was very adamant about his final wedding guests leaving so that he can be alone with May. In the time after they left, they took part in actions deemed not clean. As time went on in the story, May started to have very strong feelings for an attendant in the house named Damian. Their love was a secret from January, and only expressed within letters to one another. Until one day it was expressed in a much more extreme way. Catching a branch, and with a spring she thence - Ladies, I beg you not to take offence, I can’t embellish, I’m a simple man- Went up into the tree, and Damian Pulled up her smock at once and in he thrust (386) As clearly stated in this quote,