CANTERBURY TALES AS A IRONICAL STATEMENT

often sharply ironic, sometimes extremely sympathetic, Chaucer shows his audience the people of the time. In his dual roles of poet and pilgrim, he reveals not only the supremely good in the characters of the Parson, the Plowman, the Clerk and the Knight, but also the hideous baseness of rogues like the Pardoner, or the ludicrous pretension of the vapid Prioress. Never overtly critical, but always subtly ambiguous, Chaucer lets the characters reveal themselves, thereby exempting himself from the need for direct (and potentially dangerous) criticism. An example of irony might be the nun's tale.

Chaucer describes a nun Prioress called Madame Eglantine. A nun should be modest, had to have poverty, and pity. Chaucer describes the nun in the opposite way to show us, how the nun Prioress had all the characteristics that a nun should not have. These excerpts can be found in the source links below.