The Main Aspects Of The 14th-century Society In The Literature - Term Paper Example

The Main Aspects Of The 14th-century Society In The Literature If we were to pick two words that best describe the times of the 14th century in Europe, they would be change and distress. Distress was brought to Medieval Europe through natural disasters and wars, which tormented the population and imposed people to survive in a harsh and unfriendly environment. The Little Ice Age 1 turned agriculture into a hard and unsatisfactory activity, decreasing Europe’s agricultural productivity, which ultimately caused starvation and facilitated the spread of diseases among people. These already difficult circumstances were intensified by seven terrible waves of the Back Plague between years 1347 and 1400, which killed at least a third of the European population. On top of that, Western Europe was shattered by a long and exhausting war between England and France: the Hundred Year’s War. On such a dark background, full of sorrow and turmoil, the Church became incapable to maintain its position as a spiritual leader, as a source for relief and as a provider of ideas to help society to recover and rebuild itself. With epidemic and famine spreading everywhere and the church officials, which fell into corruption and hypocrisy, incapable of providing spiritual shelter as they previously used to, the people in Europe downgraded into some sort of cosmic insecurity. Thus, they started to screen their society for faults and wrongs, questioning the absolute power of the Catholic Church and trying to approach God not through priests, monks and other representatives of the Church, who became rich, greedy and corrupt, but through their own readings and interpretations of the Bible2. In England, John Wyclif3, distinct philosopher and theologian, criticized the wrongdoings of the Church and their corrupt ways to gain wealth and power. Therefore, the emergence of such new, progressive and obviously, heretic opinions were a clear evidence that change in scholastic and common thought was occurring. The great writers at that time could not, given the circumstances, remain indifferent to that complicated, yet fascinating scenery of the 14th century. Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio and Geoffrey Chaucer decided to incorporate all the main aspects of the 14th century society and religion in their works, creating elaborate mirrors of social conduct, behavior, spirituality and other main concerns at the time. In this paper, I will analyze and compare the relationship between behavior and punishment in Cantos III and XII from Dante's Inferno, Tale Nine, Day Two from Boccaccio's Decameron and The Pardoner’s Tale from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The Canterbury Tales are considered to stand for Chaucer’s masterpiece, in which he portrays the English society at the time, reuniting representatives from each social class who tell a tale in their own language, style and manner of thought. The Pardoner’s tale is told by a pardoner4 who introduces his story with a confession about the deceptive character of his occupation and he reveals secrets of his profession, explaining the fact that he was selling useless things as holy relics. Therefore, Chaucer presents the corrupt and immoral nature of such practices, which sold people fake hope and did nothing else but create more wealth in the name of the Church. The tales commences with the presentation of the main characters- three young men who were leading sinful lives. Their immoral behavior is generously described: they were men who liked to party excessively, spend time in bars drinking and eating in an excessive manner and worst of all, they did not see any wrongdoing in the way they lived: “And each of them at others' sins would laugh” [Geo111]. On top of that, they swore, cursed and used God’s name in vain, while indulging themselves in sexual activities with young dancers, singers and other women. This detailed description aims to present the three young men as shallow, foolish, lacking interest in any kind of spiritual matters and solely interested in satisfying their physical desires. It is a portrayal of empty souls that have been infected with the vice of gluttony. Their excessive drinking has shadowed their judgment and boosted their egos and consequently, they decide to become “the other's brother” and blindly engage to find and kill Death, who is “An unseen thief [...] who hereabouts makes all the people die” [Geo111]. I would like to notice the fact that the motif of death is presented here like an event of significant proportions and not just a few individual cases; therefore, we can say that given the tragic events of the 14th century that we discussed before, death has become a synonym for epidemic and this is the main way that it manifests itself- as an epidemic; it has obviously left a very strong and painful mark in the society and death as an epidemic has become a subject of fearful advice from a mother to her son: “He's slain a thousand with this pestilence; / And, master, ere you come in his presence, / It seems to me to be right necessary / To be forewarned of such an adversary: / Be ready to meet him for evermore / My mother taught me this, I say no more” [Geo111]. However, the three young men decide, in their vanity, to pursue and kill Death. On their way, they meet an old man, whom they speak very rudely to and who finally directs them to an oak tree where they are supposed to find Death. Still, instead of Death, they find a lot of gold florins. While conceiving a plan on how to carry the money back to their houses, one of them goes back to the village to buy food provisions and the other two remain to guard the treasure. While in the village, the young man buys powerful poison and mixes it in his “brother’s” drinks, in order to dispose of them and have the money only for himself. At the same time, the other two are plotting to kill the third one when he comes back and divide the treasure only among them two. They are, therefore, not only vain and self-indulgent characters; they are also driven by greed and have no respect for their given word to be “brothers” and to help each other in need. Basically, Chaucer presents us, through the Pardoner’s perspective, with men that lack any kind of moral values and their behavior goes beyond any attempt of justification or redemption. The end to their story is natural and authentic: the two men left to guard the treasure kill the third men coming back from the village; then, drinking from the poisonous wine, they die in great pain and torture (So they found death, after all). The relationship between behavior and punishment is obvious: their behavior is a series of sinful actions that lead up to an inevitable and natural punishment. They have brought this punishment on themselves through their own hasty decisions and their own shallow character. At the same time, they are not punished for their behavior by an earthly authority, but it seems that their death is brought upon them by the Providence itself, who watches upon all living things and sentences them accordingly. Also, Death appears at the end as a fair punishment for such sinful behavior and therefore, becomes one of God’s instruments to destroy immorality and evil on Earth. The tale also urges people to have a proper moral conduct and lead a life dedicated to good manners and honorable activities in order to be spared of such a terrible punishment, such as being murdered by close friends or dying in torturous pains. Therefore, in this tale, Chaucer did intend, to some extent or another, to highlight the importance of proper conduct and to encourage moral behavior and I believe that in this case, literary art decided to serve moral values first rather than the aesthetical values. This tendency mainly derives from the fact that, as discussed before, the 14th century was a time social upheaval; as a result, I consider that Chaucer, besides his aesthetical purposes, wanted to inspire people to morality, proper conduct and to help positively shape their daily activities, their idea of what is right and what is wrong and to make them understand that sinful behavior is not condoned, but severely punished – and what better way to portray this punishment but through the image of death itself, such a terrifying and graphic presence during that time. As opposed to the Pardoner’s tale, where three vicious men try to deceive each other, Boccaccio presents us with a story (Story Nine, Day Two) in which one envious man tries to deceive an honorable one. While away from home, Bernabo praises the great virtues of his wife, whereas Ambrogiuolo thinks that he can seduce her and make her sleep with him, despite her chastity and distinct morality. The two men turn the argument into a bet and when Ambrogiuolo realizes that Bernabo’s wife, Ginevra, is indeed a virtuous woman impossible to corrupt, he breaks into her bedroom, takes some of her jewelry and notices a distinctive mark on her body, which he specifically remembers to use as evidence. When he lies to Bernabo that he managed to seduce his wife and shows him the jewelry as proof and also describes the mark of Ginevra’s body, Bernabo, full of sadness and disappointment, returns home and asks a servant to kill his wife. Therefore, Ambrogiuolo is portrayed an immoral man who would do anything in order to win the bet and gain the promised money, while Bernabo is presented as a rushed man, who does not trust his wife and chooses to believe a stranger rather than someone who he has known for years. However, Ginevra manages to convince the servant to spear her life and escapes, dressed up as a man. This way, disguised under male attire, she faithfully serves a captain on the seas and finally ends up as the most beloved servant at the Sultan’s court in Alexandria. One day, during a fair that reunited merchants from different regions, she meets Ambrogiuolo and finds out the reason behind her husband’s decision to kill her. She brings both Ambrogiuolo and her husband in front of the Sultan and revealing her true identity she asks the Sultan to punish the first, but spare the second. Ambrogiuolo is tied to a pole, smeared with honey and exposed to the Sun, while he got stung by wasps and other flees and died in agony. It is very important to say that in this tale from the Decameron the idea of punishment is different from the Pardoner’s Tale. In the Decameron, the punishment is given by an earthly authority; therefore, it cannot be viewed as a warning of a terrible, universal punishment that one can receive if he/she doesn’t behave ethically, like the punishment that the three men received in the Pardoner’s Tale. However, the fact that Ambrogiuolo got punished is a consequence of his rushed actions of bragging about his amorous conquests; this way, the punishment is similar to the one in the Pardoner’s Tale, because it comes as a consequence of the characters’ wrong actions. At the same time, similarities can be identified in the fact that both in the Pardoner’s Tale and the tale form the Decameron, the punishment is death through torturous means. However, in the Decameron, the final punishment also bears a different moral: whatever a person does, if those actions are mal-indented they will be finally uncovered and they will be severely punished. Still, I believe that in this story from the Decameron, like in the Pardoner’s Tale, the author intents to make a strong moral statement thought his writing and to determine his readers to engage in honorable activities and avoid telling lies and deceiving people based on any kind of reasons. The next work that I intend to analyze in terms of behavior and punishment is Dante’s Inferno and more specifically, Cantos III and XII. While the two previous works that I have studied discussed human conduct and its appropriate punishment during a person’s life on Earth, Dante explores a question that has concerned humanity since prehistoric times - the existence of life after death - and takes us on a journey in the terrifying lands of the Infernal afterlife. Here, each person has a specific punishment according to his/her sins; at the same time, punishment in Hell undergoes a specific order and stratification, laid out by God Himself. As Dante descends into the Inferno guided by Virgil, he steps into a world full of sorrow, horrors and despair, where every earthly sin has found its eternal punishment. In the III Canto we are introduced to the ante-Hell, while the entrance in Hell bears a terrifying warning: “abandon every hope, who enter here” [Dan11], since in Dante’s vision, Hell will exist forever and so the punishments will torment the souls within it forever. In the antechamber of hell, “across the starless air” and “the timeless air” (attributes which symbolize the absence of hope and the eternal endurance of Hell), Dante hears lamentations and cries of despair that make him weep. Virgil explains to him that these were the morally neutral souls, “Those who are here can place no hope in death, / and their blind life is so abject that they / are envious of every other fate […] this company contained the cowardly, / hateful to God and to His enemies”[Dan11]. These people were damned to an afterlife of torment, stung by wasps and flies and being attacked by worms, while also being casted out of both Hell and Heaven. Therefore, indifference and the lack of opinion are severely punished in the afterlife, an aspect which I consider extremely important. It is also said in the Bible that God does not like indifferent people and that He would rather prefer the ones that rise against him than the neutral ones. Dante adopts this idea and finds a special place for the indifferent people in the torments of hell, making them unwanted both in Hell and in Heaven and condemning them to an afterlife of painful neutrality, making them wish and ask for the relief of death. Dante doesn’t show any sympathy for them, which demonstrates the fact that he did not believe in compromise and he did not agree with neutrality. Therefore, I would like to mention that here death is viewed like a means of salvation from an afterlife of neutrality and torture in the ante-hell, while in the Pardoner’s Tale death is presented like the worst punishment a man could receive for his sinful behavior. In the Canto XII, Dante presents us the seventh circle of hell and where murderers and tyrants were punished. Here, we are find a river of blood (like a hot lava) where the doomed murderers have to burn and among them Dante identifies Alexander the Great, Dionysus and Attila; the river got deeper where the worst tyrants were punished. This terrible image portrays punishment in Hell as a direct reflection of the person’s sins/behavior on Earth; that is, if the murderers and the tyrants shed a lot of blood on Earth, they were forced to burn in that blood during their afterlife. The relationship between punishment and behavior is therefore, a clear one: the more one murdered on Earth, the deeper the river of blood he burned in was; the punishment came in the same amount as their sins. It is important to mention the fact that, as opposed to The Canterbury Tales and The Decameron, where punishment was, somewhat, the outcome and the moral of a tale, in the Inferno punishment is the very subject of the narration and the author allows himself to explore his imagination and envision different forms of punishments, surreal, which could not be normally performed on Earth, but which are absolutely possible to exist in the terrifying world of Hell, where souls are damned to eternal torture. While in the other stories, punishment came as a terminal act, in Dante’s Inferno punishment is never-ending, perpetual, and eternal, stretched over indefinite time and space. Another major difference between the previously analyzed literary works and Dante’s Inferno, is the fact that here, in Hell, the reader first finds out about the forms of punishment and afterwards about the people that were exposed to them, while in the previous tales, the reader first learned about the characters, their immoral behavior and only by the end, about their punishment. At the same time, while in the Decameron and The Pardoner’s tale, the authors talked about punishment in order to serve moral values, in Dante’s inferno, the author describes the infernal punishments with the desire to satisfy his aesthetical ambitions (or better said, anti-aesthetical), and only after that, to send a message about proper behavior and conduct, which is, the fact that a moral conduct on Earth will spare one’s soul from the torments of Hell. Therefore, as a conclusion, I would like to state the fact that all three literary works, The Canterbury Tales, the Decameron and the Inferno serve to some extent or another, the idea of proper conduct and moral values. However, I would also like to emphasize the fact that the first two works serve this purpose to a greater extent that the last one. Why is that? Well, I believe there is a very reasonable explanation: Dante wrote his Divine Comedy at the beginning of the 14th century, when the social turmoil and the natural disaster did not yet contaminate Europe with confusion and fear. Dante was an excellent scholar, well read, opinionated and therefore he wanted to explore the question of life after death, while creating an analogy of the social and historical realities the observed during his time. He did not aim to serve moral values first through his works, but he rather sought to fulfill an aesthetical purpose. That does not mean that his word doesn’t teach moral values; on the contrary, by describing the horrors of hell and the punishments for sinful behavior, Dante made his readers revise their conduct and aim for a more righteous behavior. However, this wasn’t the writer’s primary goal; I believe that Dante’s goal was first of all the achievement of artistic fulfillment and the pursuit of aesthetical values, and second of all, the preaching of moral values. The first two works I have talked about in this paper, however, were written to serve moral values first and aesthetical values second. The Decameron, for example, is set during the Great Plague, a dark time haunted by death, fear and despair. The tales from the Decameron come, however, as a relief and a demonstration that morality and justice can prevail in such hard times when many wrongdoings were happening all around and the scenery looked so dreadful, as Boccaccio depicts it at the beginning of the book. At the same time, The Canterbury Tales reflect the social unrest in 14th century England and come to advocate moral values and to help people understand the fact that even if the Church was corrupt and could not maintain order any more that did not mean that people had to lose their moral values and that everyone should engage in sinful behavior; on the contrary, people were advised to boycott immorality and to understand that any improper conduct will ultimately bring upon them some form of punishment, like in Pardoner’s Tale. Thus, I would like to conclude with the idea that aesthetical values do not necessarily have to be separated from moral values; on the contrary, they can work together in a very graceful manner, as noticed in the works analyzed in this paper. At the same time, I believe that literature should serve moral values, because the written word always was and always will be a very strong tool of influence upon peoples’ behavior and their beliefs. Therefore, it is important to convey through literature, with the use of themes, motifs and story morals, the importance of moral values in a person’s life and to help them positively cultivate their mind and spirit. Works Cited and Consulted: Geo111: , (Chaucer 14), Geo111: , (Chaucer 213-214), Geo111: , (Chaucer 217-222), Dan11: , (Alighieri 9), Dan11: , (Alighieri 46-48; 62-63), Read More