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The Canterbury Tales
Date: ca. late 1300s
Author: Geoffrey C haucer
From: Geoffrey Chaucer, Bloom's Major Poets.
Against the darkest period of his life, Chaucer undertook his greatest literary accomplishment,
The Canterbury Tales. He worked on this project for 14 years, from 1387 until the end of his life
in 1400. According to his plan, there were to have been 120 tales, with each pilgrim telling four
stories: two on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back. He did not complete the full
plan for his book, however; the pilgrims never reach Canterbury, and there is no return journey
from Canterbury. Some of the pilgrims do not even tell stories. Twenty-eight pilgrims are
introduced in the Prologue, not counting the host and the narrator. Two out of 24 extant tales
are unfinished (the Cook's and Squire's).
The Canterbury Tales begins as a group of thirty pilgrims gathers at the Tabard Inn in
Southwark, near London, to embark on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury.
The shrine in the Canterbury Cathedral was one of the most popular sites in fourteenth-century
England. Archbishop Thomas à Becket was murdered there in 1170. The blood from his wounds
had been preserved and soon revealed miraculous powers for healing the sick. The journey from
Southwark to Canterbury in Kent could take two days on horseback, though it usually took three
days.
Chaucer sharply characterizes his pilgrims through the sketches of the narrator in the General
Prologue and the vivid relationships between the characters, as well as the tales they tell. The
tales are fascinating in themselves but are even more fascinating in what they tell us about the
tellers. Chaucer the pilgrim, Chaucer the narrator, and Chaucer the man hovers over the
narrative he created. His tone is jaunty, and he is interested in the complexity of the human
condition, which he views with an irony that is, as G. K. Chesterton said, "sometimes so large
that it is too large to be seen."
By using the frame of the pilgrimage, Chaucer was able to bring together and represent people
from many walks of life: knight, prioress, monk, merchant, men of law, scholarly clerks, miller,
reeve, pardoner, wife of Bath, and many others. In addition to this diversity, the setting of a
storytelling competition allowed him to present different literary genres: romance, fabliau, saint's
life, allegorical tale, beast fable, medieval sermon. Chaucer had already used the framing tale
technique in his Legend of Good Women, and the poet John Gower applied it to his Confessio
Amantis (1385). The most famous antecedent of the framed tales is Boccaccio's The
Decameron, an Italian work (1351–53). Chaucer, of course, wrote in Middle English, and his
works were intended to be read aloud to an audience.
Citation Information
MLA
Chicago Manual of Style
Bloom, Harold, ed. "The Canterbury Tales." Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 31 Oct.
2013. <http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?
ItemID=WE34&SID=&iPin=BMPGC03&SingleRecord=True>.
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