Scribd
Upload
3 views1 page

Social Mobility in Chaucer's Tales

The document analyzes Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to gain insight into social mobility in late medieval English urban society. It examines how merchants and craftspeople used strategies like ostentation, political participation, and marriage to maintain wealth within their social group and climb the social ladder. However, these urban residents also employed community cohesion, religious life, and language as markers of status. While wealth was a major factor in social mobility, virtue and gentilesse also played a role. The Canterbury Tales thus provide insight into how social mobility functioned in late medieval English towns and cities.

Uploaded by

Inmaculada Melón Juncosa
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
3 views1 page

Social Mobility in Chaucer's Tales

The document analyzes Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to gain insight into social mobility in late medieval English urban society. It examines how merchants and craftspeople used strategies like ostentation, political participation, and marriage to maintain wealth within their social group and climb the social ladder. However, these urban residents also employed community cohesion, religious life, and language as markers of status. While wealth was a major factor in social mobility, virtue and gentilesse also played a role. The Canterbury Tales thus provide insight into how social mobility functioned in late medieval English towns and cities.

Uploaded by

Inmaculada Melón Juncosa
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

TRABAJO DE FIN DE GRADO

LA PERCEPCIN DE LA MOVILIDAD SOCIAL EN LA INGLATERRA URBANA


DEL SIGLO XIV: LOS CUENTOS DE CANTERBURY.

Inmaculada Meln Juncosa

ABSTRACT

The crisis in the late mediaeval England resulted in changes in the conception of social
order and in the formation of new urban identities both personal and collective. This
study gives an insight into the social mobility of the period through Geoffrey Chaucers
Canterbury Tales, a contemporary vision of the change.

Three chapters articulate the discourse. Firstly, the different theories on social structure
and the chances for mobility. The next two parts analyse merchants and craftspeople,
the protagonists of urban mobility, by contrasting the pilgrims and their tales against
historical facts. As a result, their struggle to go up the social ladder and its social
implications are exposed.

It is possible to conclude that ostentation, political participation and matrimony were


used to keep fortunes within the group and to ascend socially. However and at the same
time, group cohesion, religious community life and language were also used as a mark
of status. Wealth was a key factor in mobility but so was virtue and gentilesse. This
conclusion is the contribution of the Canterbury Tales to the study of social mobility.

Key words: Canterbury Tales, social mobility, social structure.

You might also like