The Monk - Geoffrey Chaucer

"The Monk" is a poem that you can find in the "Canterbury Tales" written by Geoffrey Chaucer. In those tales the reader can understand that there are some main topics like love, everyday life situation and humoristic tales.
Right from the title the reader can easily notice that the main character will be a monk. So the expectations are to read about something that deals with clergy.
This poem is written in Middle English and it contains rhymes and figures of speech like alliterations and assonances.
The first line conveys the idea of a fairytale start (A monk there was - there is the presence of the inversion of the subject and the verb). Then it starts the description of the monk. But he was not like a monk was expected to be: always silent, devoted, honest and not interested in material things.
This particular monk instead was someone who loved enjoy his time doing amusing activities and spent money for his duties. Now the reader come at the conclusion that this tale is an humoristic one.
In the second line there is the use of tenses "rode" and "hunting" as a sport. So the intelligent reader may suppose that the character once belonged to aristocracy and this theory is confirmed by the fourth line in which the writer said "dainty horse" (=expensive horse). He rode in an arrogant way (lines fifth and sixth: "jingling in a whistling wind").
All the other lines follow this kind of description, and in the end of the tenth line the reader is sure that this monk was a corrupted one (my LORD monk was the Prior of the cell).
He did not mind about what were the rules of an ideal monk that cares about what were the instructions of St. Benet or St. Maur, but that it tended to ignore finding them unnecessary.
The monk saw the world with an open-mind and he did not care about what were the attitudes of a good clergy man. Now the reader can notice the ironic pitch of the teller of this tale.
Keeping this rhythm, the author made the comparison between the religious works (the Benedictine rules) and a hen just caught that means the monk did not consider those works holy as other people did. Then the writer said that every monk out of his cloister felt like a fish out of water. This make us understand that life's conditions of monks were limited by the lands of the cloisters. This is another way to tease our monk highlighting his difference.
In the 19th line, first appears the teller of the story: one of the 29 pilgrims going to Canterbury. He is not neutral because he said clearly his opinions about the choice of life of this monk using satire.
There is the use of idioms typical of Middle English language so that people could immediately understand what was it talking about. The following lines till the 24th, go on ridiculing the monk, using the modal tense "Must" that implies an ironic supposition because the one who was talking knew perfectly that the monk did not wanted to work hard.
Then it starts the peculiar description of the monk as you can see from reading the line between 25 and 31 where it says that he had noble origins and he did not need to work (Was all his fun, he spared for no expense); he came from a very important English family and we know that in that period the first son was fated to be the chief of the family and the others members of clergy, this may be the story of this monk. He never missed a meal as you can notice from the lines in which is said that he was fat and happy.
Here starts the physical description of the man. Even if he did not follow the right choice of life, he was a good person instead.
This is the message of the poem: to go beyond the appearance because he was bounded to belong to clergy by his family and, even though he might look like a naughty man, he was good.
The intelligent reader can also deduce that nobility controlled the clergy putting its families members inside cloisters only to assure themselves safe points (He was a prelate fit for exhibition, / he was not pale like a tormented soul).