User:Matildaelizabeth/Peasants' Revolt

Lead
=== Although the Peasant’s Revolt was only ever mentioned sparingly in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the Peasant’s Revolt was one of the many historical incidents that occurred in Chaucer’s life prior to his popular works. With other events such as The Black Death, the devastation that followed after the plague incited the peasants that survived to seek a better quality of life. With the Peasant’s Revolt marking the revolution of the freedom fight, labor had become so expensive that the feudal system was ultimately coming to an end. The rebels of the Peasant’s Revolt were represented  by various writers since they did not represent themselves in historical records. The distortion of written records implied that these rebels were illiterate, or otherwise incoherent. Some of these distortions made by countless authors were also interpretative and favored their own positions, making the job of historians more difficult as they try to uncover a more truthful representation of the rebels. Author and medievalist Steven Justice exemplifies that the rebels were, in fact, capable of speech and language at its most developed. Examples of this included cultural forms of expression such as rituals, performances, and literary texts. Evidence of the impression that the revolt made on Chaucer can be seen in the Miller’s Prologue of The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer portrays the Miller as someone who is not entirely satisfied with the typical idea of what a peasant is and how they should live, and he uses metaphors in order to make this implication in the Miller’s Prologue. The notion that the Miller is able to tell a tale that can match, or is even better than one of the highest-ranking Knights in the pilgrimage shows the rebellion and persistence in bettering one’s status, which is similar to what was seen in the attitudes of the peasants in their revolt. ===