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The framing device for the collection of stories is a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Becket in The Canterbury TalesKent. The 30 pilgrims who The Canterbury Tales the journey gather at the Tabard Inn in Southwarkacross the Thames from London. They agree to engage in a The Canterbury Tales contest as The Canterbury Tales travel, and Harry BaillyThe Canterbury Tales of the Tabard, serves as master of ceremonies for the contest. Chaucer did not complete the full plan for his book: the return journey from Canterbury is not included, and some of the pilgrims do not tell stories. The use of a pilgrimage as the framing device enabled Chaucer to bring together people The Canterbury Tales many walks of life: knight, prioress, monk; merchant, man of The Canterbury Tales, franklin, scholarly clerk; miller, reeve, pardoner; wife of Bath and many others. The The Canterbury Tales and links together offer complex depictions of the pilgrims, while, at the same time, the tales present remarkable examples of short narratives in verse, plus two expositions in prose. The pilgrimage, which in medieval practice combined a fundamentally religious purpose with the secular benefit of a spring vacation, made possible extended consideration of the relationship between the pleasures and vices of this world and the spiritual aspirations for the next. Probably influenced by French syllable-counting in versification, Chaucer developed for The Canterbury Tales a line of 10 syllables with alternating accent and regular end rhyme—an ancestor of the heroic couplet. Print Cite. Facebook Twitter. Give Feedback External Websites. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article requires login. External Websites. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree See Article History. Britannica Quiz. Get exclusive access to content from our First Edition with your subscription. Subscribe today. Learn More in these related Britannica articles:. During that tenure he was robbed several times and once beaten, sufficient reason for seeking a change of jobs. In June he was appointed subforester…. Thomas Becket and back. The illusion that the individual pilgrims rather than Chaucer himself tell their tales gave him an…. History at your fingertips. Sign up here to see what happened On This Dayevery day in your inbox! Email address. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. The Canterbury Tales The General Prologue Summary & Analysis | LitCharts

The Canterbury Tales Middle English : Tales of Caunterbury [2] is a collection of 24 stories that runs to over 17, lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between and The tales mostly written in versealthough some are in prose are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return. After a long list of works written earlier in his career, including Troilus and CriseydeHouse of Fameand Parliament of FowlsThe Canterbury Tales is near-unanimously seen as Chaucer's magnum opus. He uses the tales and descriptions of its characters to paint an ironic and critical portrait of The Canterbury Tales society at the time, and particularly The Canterbury Tales the Church. Chaucer's use of such a wide range of classes and types of people was without precedent in English. Although the characters are fictional, they still offer a variety of insights into customs and practices of the time. Often, such insight leads to a variety of discussions and disagreements among people in the 14th century. For example, although various social classes are represented in these stories and all of the pilgrims are on a spiritual quest, it is apparent that they are more concerned with worldly things than spiritual. The Canterbury Tales, the collection resembles Boccaccio's Decameronwhich Chaucer may have read The Canterbury Tales his first diplomatic mission to Italy in It has been suggested that the greatest contribution of The Canterbury Tales to English literature was the popularisation of the English vernacular in mainstream literature, as opposed to French, Italian or Latin. English had, however, been used as a literary language centuries before Chaucer's time, and several The Canterbury Tales Chaucer's contemporaries— John GowerWilliam Langlandthe Pearl Poetand Julian of The Canterbury Tales —also wrote major literary works in English. It is unclear to what extent Chaucer was seminal in this evolution of literary preference. While Chaucer clearly states the addressees of many of his poems, the intended audience of The Canterbury Tales is more difficult to determine. Chaucer was a courtierleading some to believe that he was mainly a court poet who wrote exclusively for nobility. The Canterbury Tales is generally thought to have been incomplete at The Canterbury Tales end of Chaucer's life. In the General Prologue[5] some 30 pilgrims are introduced. According to the Prologue, Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales was to write four stories from the perspective of each pilgrim, two each on the way to and from their ultimate destination, St. Thomas Becket's shrine making for a total of about stories. Although perhaps incomplete, The Canterbury Tales is revered as one of the most important works in English literature. It is also open to a wide range of interpretations. The question of whether The Canterbury Tales is a finished work has not been answered to date. There are 84 manuscripts and four incunabula printed before editions [7] of the work, dating from the late medieval and early Renaissance periods, more than for any other vernacular literary text with the exception of The Prick of Conscience. This is taken as evidence of the Tales' popularity during the century after Chaucer's death. Determining the text of the work is complicated by the question of the narrator's voice which Chaucer made part of his literary structure. Even the oldest surviving manuscripts of the Tales are not Chaucer's originals. Another famous example is the Ellesmere Manuscripta manuscript handwritten by one person with illustrations by several illustrators; the tales are put in an order that many later editors have followed for centuries. Only 10 copies of this edition are known to exist, including one held by the British Library and one held by the Folger Shakespeare Library. InLinne Mooney claimed that she was able to identify the scrivener who worked for Chaucer as an Adam Pinkhurst. Mooney, then a professor at the University of Maine and a visiting fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridgesaid she could match Pinkhurst's signature, on an oath he signed, to his handwriting on a copy of The Canterbury Tales Canterbury Tales that might have been transcribed from Chaucer's working copy. In the absence of consensus as to whether or not a complete version of the Tales The Canterbury Tales, there is also no general agreement regarding the order in which Chaucer intended the stories to be placed. Textual and manuscript The Canterbury Tales have been adduced to support the two most popular modern methods of ordering the tales. Some scholarly editions divide the Tales into ten "Fragments". The tales that make up a The Canterbury Tales are closely related and contain internal indications of their order of presentation, usually with one The Canterbury Tales speaking to The Canterbury Tales then stepping aside for another character. However, between Fragments, the connection is less obvious. Consequently, there are several possible orders; the one most frequently seen in modern editions follows the numbering of the Fragments ultimately based on the Ellesmere order. An alternative ordering seen in an early manuscript containing The Canterbury Talesthe early-fifteenth century Harley MS. Fragments IV and V, by contrast, vary in location from manuscript to manuscript. Chaucer wrote in a London dialect of late Middle Englishwhich has clear differences from Modern English. From philological research, some facts are known about the pronunciation of English during the time of Chaucer. In some cases, vowel letters in Middle English were pronounced very differently from Modern English, because The Canterbury Tales Great Vowel Shift had not yet happened. Although no manuscript exists in Chaucer's own hand, two were copied around the time of his death by Adam Pinkhursta scribe with whom he may have worked closely before, giving a high degree of confidence that Chaucer himself wrote the Tales. No other work prior to Chaucer's is known to have set a collection of tales within the framework of pilgrims on a pilgrimage. It is obvious, however, that Chaucer borrowed The Canterbury Tales, sometimes The Canterbury Tales large portions, of his stories from earlier stories, and that his work was influenced by the general state of the literary world in which he lived. Storytelling was the main entertainment in England at the time, and storytelling contests had been around for hundreds of years. In The Canterbury Tales England the English Pui was a group with an appointed leader who would judge the songs of the group. The winner received a crown and, as with the winner of The Canterbury Talesa free dinner. It was common for pilgrims on a pilgrimage to have a chosen "master of ceremonies" to guide them and organise the journey. Like the Talesit features a number of narrators who tell stories along a journey they have undertaken to flee from the Black Death. It ends with an apology by Boccaccio, much like Chaucer's Retraction to the Tales. A quarter of the tales in The Canterbury Tales parallel a tale in the Decameronalthough most of them have closer parallels in other stories. Some scholars thus find it unlikely that Chaucer had a copy of the work on hand, surmising instead that he may have merely read the Decameron at some point. They include poetry by Ovidthe Bible in one of the many vulgate versions in which it was available at the time the exact one is difficult to determineand the works of Petrarch and Dante. Chaucer was the first author to use the work of these last two, both The Canterbury Tales. Boethius ' Consolation of Philosophy appears in several tales, as the works of John Gower do. Gower was a known friend to The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer also seems to have borrowed from numerous religious encyclopaedias and liturgical writings, such as John Bromyard 's Summa praedicantiuma preacher's handbook, and Jerome 's Adversus Jovinianum. The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories built around a frame narrative or frame The Canterbury Talesa common and already long established genre of its period. Chaucer's Tales differs from The Canterbury Tales other story "collections" in this genre chiefly in its intense variation. Most story collections focused on a theme, usually a religious one. Even in the Decameronstorytellers are encouraged to stick to the theme decided on for the day. The idea of a pilgrimage to get such a diverse collection of people together for literary purposes was also unprecedented, though "the association of pilgrims and storytelling was a familiar one". While the structure of the Tales is largely linear, The Canterbury Tales one story following another, it is also much more than that. In the General PrologueChaucer describes not the tales to be told, but the people who will tell them, making it clear that structure will depend on the characters rather than a general theme or moral. This idea is reinforced when the Miller interrupts to tell his tale after the Knight has finished his. Having the Knight go first gives one the idea that all will tell their stories by class, with the Monk following the Knight. However, the Miller's interruption makes it clear that this structure will be abandoned in favour of a free and open The Canterbury Tales of The Canterbury Tales among all classes present. General themes and points of view arise as the characters tell their tales, which are responded to by other characters in their own tales, sometimes after a long lapse in which the theme has not been addressed. Lastly, Chaucer does not pay much attention to the progress of the trip, to the time passing as the pilgrims travel, or to specific locations along the way to Canterbury. His writing of the story seems focused primarily on the stories being told, and not on the pilgrimage itself. The variety of Chaucer's tales shows the breadth of his skill and his familiarity with many literary forms, linguistic styles, and rhetorical devices. Medieval schools of rhetoric at the time encouraged such diversity, dividing literature as Virgil suggests into high, middle, and low styles as measured by the density of The Canterbury Tales forms and vocabulary. The Canterbury Tales popular method of division The Canterbury Tales from St. Augustinewho focused more on audience response and less on subject matter a Virgilian concern. Augustine divided literature into "majestic persuades", "temperate pleases", and "subdued teaches". Writers were encouraged to write in a way that kept in mind the speaker, subject, audience, purpose, manner, and occasion. Chaucer moves freely between all of these styles, showing favouritism to none. With this, The Canterbury Tales avoids targeting any specific audience or social class of readers, focusing instead on the characters of the story and writing their tales with a skill proportional to their social status and learning. However, even the lowest characters, such as the Miller, show surprising rhetorical ability, although their subject matter is more lowbrow. Vocabulary also plays an important part, as those of the higher classes refer to a woman as a "lady", while The Canterbury Tales lower classes use the word "wenche", with no exceptions. At times the same word will mean entirely different things between classes. The word "pitee", for example, is a noble concept to the upper classes, while in the Merchant's Tale it refers to sexual intercourse. Again, however, tales such as the Nun's Priest's Tale show surprising skill with words among the lower classes of the group, while the Knight's Tale is at times extremely simple. Chaucer uses the same meter throughout almost all of his tales, with the exception of Sir Thopas and his prose tales. It is a decasyllable line, probably borrowed from French and Italian forms, with riding rhyme and, occasionally, a caesura in the The Canterbury Tales of a line. His meter would later develop into the heroic meter of the 15th and 16th centuries and is an ancestor of iambic pentameter. The Canterbury Tales avoids allowing couplets to become too prominent in the poem, and four of the tales the Man of Law's, Clerk's, Prioress', and Second Nun's use rhyme royal. The Canterbury Tales was written during a turbulent time in English history. The Catholic Church was in the midst of the Western Schism and, although it was still the only Christian authority in Western Europe, it The Canterbury Tales the subject of heavy controversy. Lollardyan early English religious movement led by John Wycliffeis mentioned in the Taleswhich also mention a specific incident involving pardoners sellers of indulgences The Canterbury Tales, which were The Canterbury Tales to relieve the temporal punishment due for sins that were already forgiven in the Sacrament of Confession who nefariously claimed to be collecting for St. Mary Rouncesval hospital in England. The Canterbury Tales is among the first English literary works to mention paper, a relatively new invention that allowed dissemination of the written word never before seen in England. Political clashes, such as the Peasants' Revolt and clashes ending in the deposing of King Richard IIThe Canterbury Tales reveal the complex turmoil surrounding Chaucer in the time of the Tales' writing. Many The Canterbury Tales his close friends were executed and he himself moved to Kent to get away from events in London. While some readers look to interpret the characters The Canterbury Tales The Canterbury Tales as historical figures, other readers choose to interpret its significance in less literal terms. After analysis of Chaucer's diction and historical context, his work appears to develop a critique of society during his lifetime. Within a number of his descriptions, his comments can appear complimentary in nature, but through clever language, the statements are ultimately critical of the pilgrim's actions. It is unclear whether Chaucer would intend for the reader to link his characters The Canterbury Tales actual persons. Instead, it appears that Chaucer creates fictional characters to be general representations of people in such fields of work. Geoffrey Chaucer () - "The Canterbury Tales" (in middle english and modern english)

Librarius Bookshop. Chaucer's Life and Times. The Canterbury Tales Troilus and Criseyde. Links for further study. Historians are uncertain about his exact date of birth. Geoffrey's well-to-do parents, John Chaucer and Agnes Copton, possessed several buildings in the vintage quarter in London. Not much is known about Geoffrey's school career. He must have had some education in Latin and Greek. The Canterbury Tales of school he went on as a page in the household of the Countess of Ulster. Chaucer rose in royal employment and became a knight of the shire for Kent. As a member of the king's household, Chaucer was sent on diplomatic errands throughout Europe. From all these activities, he gained the knowledge of society that made it possible to write The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer died in October and The Canterbury Tales buried in Westminster Abbey in London. He was the first of those that The Canterbury Tales gathered in what we now know as the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. Chronology of Geoffrey Chaucer's life and times Librarius Links Biographiesbibliographiesaudio filesbackground information and essays. It is the story of a group of thirty people who travel as pilgrims to Canterbury England. The pilgrims, who come from all layers of society, tell stories to each other to kill time while they travel to Canterbury. If we trust the General Prologue, Chaucer intended that each pilgrim should tell two The Canterbury Tales on the way The Canterbury Tales Canterbury and two tales on the way back. He never finished his enormous project and even the completed tales were not finally revised. Scholars are uncertain about the order of the tales. As the printing press had yet to be invented when Chaucer wrote his works, The Canterbury Tales has been passed down in several handwritten manuscripts. Buy your own copy of The Canterbury Tales! Visit Librarius on-line bookshop. Buy the Book Today! Back to top.