This week, I’d like to treat you to some power metal once more. Domine’s The Bearer of the Black Sword. Why? Because they chant “Lord Elric,” that’s why.
If there’s one thing that I remember about my time with Canterbury Tales in high school (aside from my idea of a short story being several pages longer than anyone else’s), it’s that people’s ideas about morals at the time were rather rigid, even if they weren’t following their own code. Chaucer has some fun with this by expressing his distastes and other feelings towards what many people seemed to be doing and what he felt they should be doing (the Church and figures within it are good examples). There is a lot more to it than that, but I’m going to do what Chaucer didn’t and keep it short.
As is pointed out in this article here from Attitude Media, which seems to cover some rather interesting parts of life in the Middle Ages as part of the series, morals were pretty lax in comparison to what we’ve got going on now. I’m sure there are arguments in every which way but totally sensible that could be had now, but this falls in line pretty well with what Chaucer was saying. At the end of that article, it is said that figureheads were giving a bad example to the people; Chaucer just so happens to be criticizing those same people. He was also prodding the common-folk, but that’s par for the course in any time.
So what can we see from all of this? Well, there were definitely some people who valued rigid morals and upheld them. Others said they valued rigid morals and were most certainly not following them in private. There were also those who very publicly and loudly denounced morality, I’m sure. The point is that not everyone was totally okay with letting lax morality (that almost sounds Latin, doesn’t it?) slide. I don’t know how well Chaucer followed the example he seemed to be setting in his Tales, but he was clearly making a statement. Maybe he’s like some modern journalists and ignoring all of what he says, or maybe he’s doing more than just criticizing and giving us a glimpse of his life. Well, more of a glimpse than he already had let us know he would be giving us.
History 