Liz’s Blog

This week two more groups presented their projects on the Canterbury Tales.  The Wife of Bath group made each did individual blogs, a close reading and sketch of the Wife of Bath, a quotebook, artsy activities, wrote a paper, and made some pretty cool pants.  The pants were very symbolic and represented the themes and characteristics of the Wife of Bath.  I learned the main theme of the Wife of Bath is control.  She wants and gets control over all of her lovers in her relationships.  Another big thing in this story was women’s rights.  The wife openly talked about her sex life and all of her marriages, and that was normal for women to do before this time period.  Women having control over women also wasn’t a normal thing.  This is a apologia, which is like a personal sermon where the person tells their story.  

The Pardoner group went the next day.  They all seemed to have adequate knowledge of the tale and could really go deep into the meanings of things.  As I was doing my project on The Wife of Bath, I noticed that the Pardoner often interrupted, and I thought he was interrupting for good reasons.  After learning about the Pardoner and finding out about his personality, I realized that he was probably being sarcastic and was most likely drunk.  The Pardoner was a huge hypocrite.  He said the three worst things to do were drink, swear, and gamble.  However, before he started to tell his tale he had to get a strong drink.  He was a huge drunk.  He would also use God’s name in vain right after he said that swearing was horrible.  The Pardoner was a liar and fake also.  He went around telling people that he collecting money for the church, but was really stealing it for himself.  The best part about this groups presentation was the brownies at the end