Comparing Differences in Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights
Comparing Differences in Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights
I. From the beginning of her story, the Wife of Bath speaks with such clear understanding of the concepts of marriage, religion, chastity and virginity (or lack, thereof) and the interdependence they have to each other that it is clear she speaks from experience. That she had five husbands and is openly pursuing a sixth, shows that “she knew of the remedies of love…that art’s old dance” (Chaucer 25). The reader learns not only her feelings on these subjects but also her steadfast pursuit to, essentially, take her men for all that they are worth. The first three husbands of the Wife of Bath, the reader learns, “were good, and rich and old.” Clearly, once two people are wed in marriage, sexual relations become a regular part of the equation, but the Wife of Bath is complaining more about their failure as husbands expressly because of their inability to perform up to the wife’s sexual standards. While this may seem like a standard complaint after marriage, the reader soon learns one of the wife’s principle rules:
“A wise woman will concentrate on getting
That love which she doesn’t possess;
But since I had them wholly in my hand,
And since they had given me all their land,
Why should I take pains to please them,
Unless it should be for my own profit and pleasure?” (Chaucer 191-3).
Five husbands takes some toll on a woman, it would seem. Yet this does not stop the wife’s further with continuing her autobiography. Her story than takes us from a knight that raped a young maiden, to an old women that becomes his future wife.
II. The importance of storytelling is significant as a part of the fisherman’s life in
The Arabian Nights, just as much as fishing or his family would be. This clearly shows the power of magic or magical realism in these stories. These stories, it must be remembered, are nothing more than stories. Their existence is in the scope and breadth of the detail with which Shahrazad tells them. The happenings of the story, therefore, no longer need to rely on the modern conventions of logic, but rather on the unwritten rules of life, from the perspective of ancient Arabians.
The old fisherman, who remains unnamed throughout the story, is reliant on the verses that he recites to describe his emotions and the path that his life is taking, steadily...