The first part of the tale is an autobiographical story
The first part of the tale is an autobiographical story, one of the characters tells its own story that once it had a good clothes and comfortable living, and it is a alchemist with a master that is so in debt because of their failed attempts at alchemy. This character then tries to explain their failed attempts at alchemy by telling their elusive search for Philosopher’s Stone. The first part is a backround of the tale. However, The second part comprises the main story named ”The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale”.
First of all, if I needed to give briefing, I would like to start with beginning of the story or tale. The story begins with two characters who named the Canon and the Yeoman joining the rest of the group on the road to Canterbury. Other characters in the group want these two to tell a story, and the Yeoman decides to tell the story, and then he tells different stories about how the Canon tricked the friar by giving the friar quicksilver saying it is real silver. When we look at what the tale tells, we can also say that Chaucer uses this tale to describe his criticism of alchemy. Finally, the plot is that The Yeoman focuses on alchemy and people who are being tricked by it. His tale is making fun of canons and selling them out to be tricksters and thieves, while selling himself out along the way.
Surely, there is some elements that is mentioned in the story, with these elements, the narrator may try to tell the difference between true and false. Alchemy is the subject of the Canon Yeoman’s tale, as the Canon calls it, the “sliding” scienc, and alchemy argues that all things are in a state of ever-changing, slipping from one thing to another. Coals can become the philosopher’s stone, metal melts to become a false covering for a crucifix, and thanks to the trickery of the tale’s false Canon, we are never quite sure what substance it is we are examining.
When we look at the analysis of the Characters, the Yeoman, the narrator, Chaucer’s Yeoman begins his literary life as the Canon’s supporter without knowing what is right or what is wrong. He was praising the Canon as an extraordinary, wonderful, skilled man, before immediately retracting all that praise to unmask his master as the tricky charlatan he is. Yet this casts huge doubt on the truth of what the Yeoman actually utters. There is a big difference between his initial claim that the Canon could pave the way to Canterbury with gold, and the portrait of the Canon built up in his tale. Moreover, the sweating arrival of the pair combined and covered with the all black or grey Canon and blushing green or red Yeoman suggests that even the characters within the frame narrative of the Tales are undergoing some sort of alchemical transformation.
As for the Canon, he is a mysterious, effective and environmental figure, and one who is at the very moment his falsehood appears to be flied into a temper, runs away from the company, and from the Tales – for good. He is almost silent, and yet his silence is not from shyness, or from high-status, he even physically appears shrouded and covered up. Moreover, we never actually ascertain whether the Yeoman’s tale is about this Canon, or – as he claims – about another Canon. It seems hugely unexpected person, even to take the Yeoman’s words at face value that the Yeoman would have this amount of knowledge about an entirely different Canon. The Canon then is a liminal figure, sitting somewhere on the border between reality and fiction, between true and false.
Finally, As I mentioned before, Chaucer satires quietly the church in this tale but he does not excess so much, so he tries to hide the seriousness of the tale by having the Yeoman tell it. He chooses the Yeoman to be the narrator so the Church will hopefully laugh at the Yeoman’s story before it begins to take offense by it, and the Church does not take offensive at. This tale expresses a keen sense of its teller and his position, and the Yeoman’s position is disturbingly uncertain. There are two important points we have to focus on. The first is the direct assertion that the second Canon has betrayed many innocent and gullible people. The Yeoman’s Tale shows us precisely how the false Canon accomplishes that betrayal through deceit. The second point concerns the fact that the Yeoman has had his suspense moves, actually he does not know what it is false or true. It is important to note here that the Yeoman attributes the loss of his suspense to the cause of heating metals and not at all to the trickery or doubleness of Canon.
