The Canterbury Tales
1478
- death
- english narrative poetry
- juvenile poetry
- christian pilgrims and pilgrimages in literature
- great_books_of_the_western_world
- fiction
- pilgrims and pilgrimages in literature
- storytelling in fiction
- textual criticism
- storytelling in literature
The story
A collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales (mostly in verse, although some are in prose) are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. In a long list of works, including Troilus and Criseyde, House of Fame, and Parliament of Fowls, The Canterbury Tales was Chaucer's magnum opus. He uses the tales and the descriptions of the characters to paint an ironic and critical portrait of English society at the time, and particularly of the Church. Structurally, the collection bears the influence of The Decameron, which Chaucer is said to have come across during his first diplomatic mission to Italy in 1372. However, Chaucer peoples his tales with 'sondry folk' rather than Boccaccio's fleeing nobles.
What it’s like
Read it like a long walk in spring: rhymed couplets in Middle English that bounce along the road, with the cheerful clatter of horses, inn yards and tavern talk never far off. The prose-and-verse voice is wry and observant, with sharp little sketches of each traveller and a narrator who seems to be enjoying the joke alongside you. The mood swings from sly satire to bawdy farce to sudden, sobering meditations on mortality, and the stories are short enough to read one at a time over several evenings. Intensity is mixed: there is frank, often crude sexual humour, several scenes of violence and cruelty, and death looms over many tales, though it is mostly handled with irony rather than horror. Vibe: earthy, witty, and gently worldly. It suits a slow reading with a glass of wine, a comfort reread on a lazy afternoon, or a long train journey with a good annotated edition. It is for readers who enjoy satire, character comedy and the pleasure of old-fashioned storytelling, and who don't mind bawdiness.
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