From Legend to History:
The Old English and Medieval
Periods
A National Spirit
Chaucer’s Guided Tour
of Medieval Life and
Literature
The Journey Begins
• During the Medieval Period, traveling became
somewhat of a pastime. Chaucer uses this fact to set
his story, The Canterbury Tales, in motion.
• The Canterbury Tales begins with a Prologue, in
which the narrator (presumably, Chaucer) meets 29
other pilgrims at the Tabard Inn, located in a
London suburb.
• As the pilgrims prepare for their journey, the Inn’s
host, Harry Bailey, sets a challenge to make the
journey more entertaining.
The Journey Begins
• Bailey’s challenge:
• On the journey to and from Canterbury, each
pilgrim must four stories: two on the way, and two
on the return trip.
• The person with the best tale will be treated to a
feast hosted by the other pilgrims.
• The pilgrims accept this challenge, and Bailey
decides to join them and judge the competition.
• This frames the rest of Chaucer’s work, as each of its
sections consists of one of the pilgrim’s tales.
• Chaucer’s Tales, then, is essentially a story about the
twenty-four stories told on the pilgrimage.
Snapshots of an Era
• In the Prologue, Chaucer provides a brief but vivid
description of each pilgrim, creating a lively sense of
medieval life and pealing back the curtain on much
of medieval culture.
• Begins with the courtly world, which centered
around the nobility.
• Proceeds to the middle ranks of medieval society,
which was comprised of learned professionals
and wealthy businessmen.
Snapshots of an Era
• In the Prologue, Chaucer provides a brief but vivid
description of each pilgrim, creating a lively sense of
medieval life and pealing back the curtain on much
of medieval culture.
• Includes the lower class, which was made up of
craftsmen, storekeepers, and minor
administrators.
• Various ranks within the Church, a cornerstone
of medieval society, is also represented.
Snapshots of an Era
• Unique to Chaucer’s Prologue is the way in which he
presents his characters and their ranks as real
people, individuals who defy categorization.
• As a result, Chaucer’s work often exposes—and
obliterates—common stereotypes of medieval life
and society, providing the reader with keen insights
into the true realities of the medieval world.
A Literary Tour
• Popular genres in Chaucer’s day: romances (tales of
chivalry), fabliaux (short, bawdy, humorous stories),
stories of saint’s lives, sermons, and allegories
(narratives in which characters represent abstractions
such as Pride and Honor).
• Within each pilgrim’s tale in Chaucer’s Tales, a
major literary form of medieval literature is
represented.
A Literary Tour
• Chaucer wrote much of his work using his own
form: the heroic couplet (a pair of rhyming lines with
five stressed syllables each).
• This important poetic innovation, along with several
other literary achievements, earned him the title “the
father of English poetry.”
The Endless Road
• Traveling with Chaucer’s pilgrims, a reader may feel
that the world is a big place but that, somehow, all of
its pieces fit together.
• Chaucer’s Tales reminds us that every journey from
here to there is filled with stories that are waiting to
be told.
Chaucer’s Guided Tour
of Medieval Life and
Literature
From Legend to History:
The Old English and Medieval
Periods
A National Spirit