Though mentioned scarcely, the knight’s yeoman in Canterbury Tales by Chaucer portrays an important side of 14th century society. The yeoman is introduced in the general prologue, following the description of the knight’s son. Chaucer added the yeoman in order to make the knight look more humble because the yeoman is his sole servant. A forester, the reader perceives the yeoman like a robin-hood like character. A man who takes his profession very seriously, the yeoman also portrays a plethora of weapons, and, according to his job title, he would use these weapons to defend the knight’s forest much like the modern-day policemen. We also chose to represent the yeoman in a modern voice because we felt that this yeoman would integrate better into modern-day life than other characters mentioned in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Observing all these characteristics of the yeoman, we as a group decided to incorporate these characteristics into every aspect of our commonplace book and autobiography, reflecting fourteenth century society.
Commonplace Book
The social media site that we chose to be the platform for our commonplace book was Twitter. We chose Twitter to represent the yeoman’s plausible favorable social media platform if he lived in present-day America. Because of the constant attention that monitoring a forest requires, the yeoman would have a limited amount of time to set up a complicated profile. We chose twitter as the platform for our commonplace book because it only requires an email, name, and password to set up, so the yeoman could get back to protecting the forest as soon as possible. He also would have no reason to share information online, nor connect with other people because his life revolved around being secluded in the forest. We reasoned that his twitter would mostly be filled with updates for the knight on the status of his land while he is away on military endeavors by posting pictures of the land. The positive feedback that the yeoman would get on these posts would cause him to open up, therefore post more about his life, which revolves around weapons. Because of the diversity and accessibility of Twitter, it becomes obvious that this social media platform would be ideal for a modern-day yeoman.
In order to make his personality more accessible to modern-day people who use social media, we decided to compare the yeoman closely to a familiar icon, Robin Hood. The yeoman in Canterbury Tales shares many similarities with Robin Hood, for they both parole the forests wearing green and with an armory of weapons. Robin hood also does act like a police officer in his story, acting as a representative of the people. This comparison also adds depth to the yeoman’s character because it alludes to a fairy tale that many grew up hearing, thus giving the yeoman a metaphor in modern-day society.
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A characteristic of the yeoman that is emphasised in our commonplace book is the condition of his armor and clothing. Because most of the passage that the yeoman is introduced in talks about his attire, we concluded that his clothing and weapons were a metaphor for his personality. Examples of this metaphor are the Saint Christopher's medal that the yeoman wears around his neck, which represents that he is a devote Christian, and the clean state that he keeps all his weapon and armor in, proving that he values them immensely. we wanted to emphasize the symbolism behind objects like this that show certain aspects of his life and journey p until the point he accompanies the Knight onto this pilgrimage.
The Autobiography
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The Yeoman’s life events deserved to be chronologically cited in an informative manner, so my group decided to use facebook as our platform for our autobiography. This platform is not the fanciest of ways for one portray his or her autobiography, which represents the humbleness of the yeoman because of his time in the forest. We also chose facebook for the yeoman because of its necessity in the present day, so the yeoman would have followed this trend to update those on his current position, which would have changed sporadically because of his foresting occupation.
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With the first few posts in this autobiography, we wanted to emphasize the hiring of the yeoman for his forester skills, which plays a huge part in his persona. As Chaucer put it when explaining the yeoman’s attire, “Wel coulde he dresse his takel yemanly” (106). Chaucer is implying in this quote that the yeoman dressed in a workman manner, meaning this pilgrimage was strictly business to him. Because of the professional reasoning behind the yeoman joining the pilgrimage, we deemed it necessary to include his work history in the Fakebook profile to support his choice to accompany the Knight on this pilgrimage
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We also use our autobiography to post landmarks of the pilgrim’s journey to Canterbury along the way. These markings of places shows the yeoman’s higher level of education in terms of topography, which one would not expect from a fourteenth century servant. However, a yeoman differs from a servant because he is an independent commoner that acts as a military servant. We wanted to represent this difference, particularly in our autobiography, by showing the depth of the yeoman in his observations of places, and recognition of the distance until the group reaches the goal of their pilgrimage. Facebook was a great vessel to not only show the humbleness of the
When faced with the challenge of representing the yeoman, we strove to not only represent him in a modern day manner but also his reflection on the nobility in society. Through our commonplace book on Twitter, we portrayed the yeoman’s modern-day voice because of his emphasis on materialistic values with little time, which is a characteristic that popular tweeters possess. We also made the yeoman more compatible by comparing him to a familiar underdog icon, Robinhood. The autobiography also uses this same modern-voice, but it also explains the weight one’s job had on one’s identity and social ranking during the fourteenth century as well as the bias this ranking can hold. Though the yeoman’s only section consists of seven lines, there is so much one can learn about the fourteenth century just from this minuscule character.
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