If anyone has ever read the general prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, they will find Chaucer's attitude to be very opinionated and complex towards members of the clergy. Part of the clergy consists of the monk, the prioress (also known as the nun) and the brother. Chaucer elaborated on each of these members in each section of the Prologue. By reading each section and analyzing his attitude towards each member, it becomes clear that Chaucer has a complex attitude of appreciation and dishonesty towards members of the clergy. At the beginning of the General Prologue, Chaucer describes the life and personality of the Prioress. The reader can imagine her as an elegant, contemporary ideal of beauty derived from the expectations of a nun in medieval times. He also talks about his fascination with kindness towards animals. For example, Chaucer states, “She cried if she saw a mouse / caught in a trap, if it was dead or bleeding” (Chaucer, “General Prologue” 7). Loving animals so much in medieval times was considered a sign of weakness. As a nun at that time, her charity had to be directed more towards the poor and needy, and not towards soulless animals. Chaucer's appreciative attitude comes when he talks about his feelings towards these animals. The people in the church find this unnatural while Chaucer somewhat agrees with her showing this kind of love towards something other than the church. It also shows the Prioress's dishonest attitude because she knows that her feelings of love and her constant penchant for materialistic objects are false and completely against religious habits. Second, the monk's way of life is set out in the general prologue. Chaucer describes him as a very mag...... middle of paper ......es of a brother, (which explains Chaucer's dishonest attitude), Chaucer always ironically praises the brother as a strong leader of the church. As the reader goes through the Canterbury Tales, we see that Chaucer displays a complex attitude of dishonesty and disenfranchisement not only towards the friar, the monk and the prioress, but towards all the other characters presented. Chaucer showed a sense of appreciation towards both the monk, the prioress and the friar when he spoke of the importance of elegance and having the most beautiful things. Each of these clergy had to have everything from the finest clothing to the finest gold buckle on their shoe. In analyzing this, Chaucer also seemed to describe the feeling of dishonesty that these clergy had. Each broke the rules of their way of life in a way that Chaucer seemed to characterize as corrupt..