A Comparative Study of The Hypocrites of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and Hafez’s Divan

Hypocrisy is described as the mother of evils in both Islam and Christianity. In scriptures of these religions, the hypocrites are described as those who apparently profess to the two faiths but in heart they are either antagonistic to them or exploit them as means for satisfying their worldly desires. However, the evil becomes menacing when the hypocrites claim a place in the political power structures. In the fourteenth-century societies of England and Fars (Shiraz,) due to the pervasive presence of hypocrite clerics and their significant influence both on the common people and in the power structure, the hypocrisy of these men was a major topic in literature of the time. In two masterpieces of English and Persian literatures of this century, that is The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (1342/43- 1400), and the Divan of Khājeh Shams-Adīn Moḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī (1325- 1390), the hypocrite men of religion were prime target of ridicule and criticism. This article is an attempt to show that despite the difference in genre, the two works seem to focus on and highlight the same concern about hypocrisy and the hypocrites. Moreover, in their treatment of the theme of religious hypocrisy, the two poets seem to have adopted some similar methods of characterization and focused on identical and shared features of the hypocrite men of religion in the Divan and The Canterbury Tales.