Moral Ambiguity and Drunkenness in The Canterbury Tales

In the scholarship surrounding The Canterbury Tales, the subject of drunkenness has generally been neglected. For instance, Charles Shain\u27s Pulpit Rhetoric in Three Canterbury Tales, although discussing at length the reprentations of sin in Chaucer\u27s work, does not address drunkenness as any more than a form of the sin of gluttony. This is a mistake, because the frequency with which drunkenness appears in The Canterbury Tales alone should demonstrate that it is worth closer comparative study. By examining the treatment of drunkenness in several of the tales, a more complete picture can be drawn