FLE-140

COMMENTARY-1 Erva Bulut

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The main themes of this week’s assigned part of The Canterbury Tales are the comparison of
the corrupted vs. the devoted priests and the comparison of sexual vs. real holy love. In other words,
Hubert is the description of a corrupted friar who makes use of his license to take money and have
affairs with young women, while The Parson is the perfect example of a decent, humble, and ideal
Christian. The author compares these two different person types of clergy. When it comes to the
second theme, there is The Wife of Bath and The Friar, symbolizing the love between two people,
and the Parson symbolizing the love of God or Christianity. This comparison is what I liked most in
the text because it gave me the chance to get to know the people of that era and also the
opportunity to learn the thoughts, biases the everyday people have about them. However, there is
something that I did not like regarding the language in the text. Knowing that this text is not peculiar
to today’s English literature, I found some words pretty debatable because of the possible meanings
they could have in today’s English (narrowed-down meanings, the change in the meaning). That’s
why I could not be sure of myself and say that I had understood each and every phrase correctly.
Except for these words, I think the text is quite attractive thanks to the humorous and daily language
use. For instance, the expression ‘’Gap-toothed was she it is no lie to say’’ really stood out and
surprising because when I read a literary text in English, I did not expect to see such expressions.
Nevertheless, it made me aware of the fact that daily language can also be literary.