The Canterbury Tales
Key Concepts
Author Info
• Author: Geoffrey Chaucer
– Born sometime between 1340-1343
– His family was well off, though not nobility
– One of the first to write in English
(French was the spoken language of the time)
– Considered to be the greatest English writer
before Shakespeare.
– Most famous book:
The Canterbury Tales
The time period
• At least once in their lifetime,
people made a pilgrimage (religious journey)
to the shrine of St. Thomas á Becket in the
city of Canterbury
– Becket had been the archbishop of Canterbury
– He was murdered in his own cathedral
• Chaucer uses this idea of a pilgrimage to
help form his frame story.
The Canterbury Tales
• Chaucer’s most famous book
– He himself is a character in the book as a short,
plump, slightly foolish pilgrim who commands
no great respect
• This book was still unfinished when he died
• Type: Fiction
• Format: Collection of stories within a frame
story
The Frame Story
• Group of travelers
• Gather at Tabard Inn (outside of London,
approx. 70 miles from Canterbury)
• Harry Bailey, the innkeeper/host
suggests a storytelling competition (to
pass the time while traveling)
– Each person will tell 2 stories each way
30 people
¼ completed before
x 4 stories per person
Chaucer died
120 stories
Characterization
• Involves all the methods a writer uses to
reveal the values and personalities of his
or her characters.
• A writer may make explicit statements
about a character or may reveal a
character indirectly through well-chosen
words, thoughts, and actions.
Paraphrase
• Paraphrasing involves putting a text you
have read into your own words to check
your understanding of its content.
• A paraphrase differs from a summary in
that a summary is always shorter than
the original, while a paraphrase may be
approximately the same length as the
original.
The Pardoner’s Tale
• In the Middle Ages, pardoners were licensed by
the pope to grant indulgences, gifts of divine
mercy to repentant sinners.
• By Chaucer’s time, corrupt pardoners were
selling indulgences for personal gain rather
than granting them to penitents in return for
voluntary donations to the church.
• Exemplum – A brief story used to teach a
lesson.
The Pardoner’s Tale
• Irony – Contrast or discrepancy between
expectation and reality.
• Situational Irony – Exists when an occurrence
is the opposite of a character’s expectations.
• Dramatic Irony – Occurs when readers or
audiences have information unknown to the
characters.
• Verbal Irony – Occurs when a character says
one thing while meaning another.
• Tone – How an author expresses his or her
attitude toward a subject.
The Wife of Bath’s Tale
• The Wife’s tale is set in the shadowy
margin between the pagan and Christian
worlds.
The Wife of Bath’s Tale
• The quality of literary work that makes
characters and their situations seem funny
or amusing is called humor.
• Types of humor range widely, from puns
and word play to broad satire, sarcasm,
parody, and subtle wit.
The Wife of Bath’s Tale
• “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” like many other tales
from Chaucer’s era, is told in the form of a
narrative poem.
• Narrative poetry is verse that is specifically
meant to tell a story.
• To analyze a work of narrative poetry, you can
look at the ways in which an author combines
structure, word choice, and literary elements
(such as character, narrator, and conflict) to
express a theme or idea.
The Wife of Bath’s Tale
Analyzing Structure
• “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” consists of the
Wife’s introduction, followed by a tale in
which events are told in chronological
order.