The Canterbury Tales Intro

ENG LIT – Biggs
Canterbury Tales Intro.
The Canterbury Tales
By Geoffrey Chaucer
“Questions press upon him [Chaucer]; he asks them, but…leaves them unsolved, uncramped
by the solution of the moment, and thus fresh for the generations that come after him.”
- Virginia Woolf
THE MIDDLE AGES (1066 – 1509)
1066 – Battle of Hastings; Norman Conquest –
Marks the end of the Old English Period and the beginning of The Medieval (or Middle
English) Period.
During this time period the crusades began, The Hundred Years War took place, the Black
Death struck, the Peasants’ Revolt occurred, and Caxton introduced the printing press.
1509 – Henry VIII ascends the throne –
Marks the end of the Medieval (Middle English) Period and the beginning of the Renaissance.
The Middle Ages was a time of great change sparked by violence. Read excerpts of The Daily
Life in Chaucer’s England by Jeffrey L. Singman and Will McLean for more information on
this time period. Understanding the time period helps understand Chaucer and his work.
WHY CHAUCER? (b. estimated in 1342 – d. Oct. 25, 1400)
Geoffrey Chaucer is the dominant literary figure to emerge from the Medieval Age.
His Canterbury Tales ranks as one of the greatest works of all time. It might surprise you to
learn that a good bit of Chaucer’s material is taken from other writings, but before you write
off Chaucer as a plagiarist, look at his era. There were no copyright laws (Shakespeare, too,
was quite a “borrower” of other plots), and the originality of the story line was not much
valued. Instead, the teller who could make the story come alive was celebrated and treasured.
(Think about the importance of story-telling from Beowulf. That spirit continued into the
Middle Ages, and Chaucer was that kind of story-teller.
Comparisons of his works with other treatments of similar plots reveal his genius for
developing characters and re-creating dialogue. His handling of detail, as you will see in the
Prologue, is more revealing than paragraphs of description by a less-talented writer. The
variety in the collection of stories shows that he was a master of many forms. The sheer
brilliance of his story-telling is enough to ensure his reputation, but there is more.
There are thirty travelers, including Chaucer himself, in the Canterbury Tales. Each
was to tell four stories, two on the way to the Shrine of Thomas Becket and two on the return
journey. Chaucer only completed twenty-four stories, but his multi-leveled complex array of
frame and tales has never been duplicated in English literature. It’s too bad that Chaucer died
before it was even half-finished.

ENG LIT – Biggs
Canterbury Tales Intro.
ABOUT THE CANTERBURY TALES:
They are written in rhyming iambic pentameter couplets
(known as heroic couplets)
Example (from Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock):
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.
Chaucer intended his Canterbury Tales to be an encyclopedia work (including a multitude of
literary forms)—what the Middle Age writers loved to do. He sought to draw together all
forms of literature prevalent at the time.
His Canterbury Tales include:
1. exempla (an exemplum is an anecdote that exemplifies a moral, right way of living; it
was used by preachers to prove their points; the Pardoner’s Tale is an exemplum)
2. knightly romance (story of knights and their deeds; main elements include adventure,
love, and magic; the Wife of Bath’s Tale is a knightly romance)
3. French fabliaux (the fabliau is a bawdy tale that involves bourgeois or lower class
people in an outrageous, often obscene plot; the Miller’s Tale is a fabliau)
4. sermons and beast fables
Although allegories were a more common style for communicating morals, Chaucer
preferred a more indirect, sophisticated approach through broad humor and satire.
Chaucer used satire as a weapon to expose the injustice and human hypocrisy he observed.
To gather the diverse forms into a coherent narrative, Chaucer built a world in The
Canterbury Tales that is unparalleled in literature. He unified his work in two ways: he used
the journey motif, and he made the stories and their tellers interact and comment on other
stories and tellers. This “frame” for his tales is as lively and interesting as the tales
themselves. Other writers had used frames, but Chaucer is again far above the rest of the
crowd. He employed the device of a pilgrimage, a journey undertaken to some religious
shrine (quite familiar to his audience), to bring together a sampling of medieval society. He
included representatives from the basic classes of his world: the upper class world of the court
is seen in the knight and his squire; the religious world, with its saints and sinners, is amply
revealed in the pious Parson, the dainty Prioress, the nefarious Summoner, the greedy
Pardoner, the unholy Monk, and the calculating Friar. He includes the middle classes with
characters like the Wife of Bath (a weaver) and the Franklin, and the lower classes are figures
like the uncouth Miller and the Reeve. In fact, Chaucer’s cross section of the population of
14 th century England is missing only the very highest and the very lowest ranks, the nobility
and the serfs.

ENG LIT – Biggs
Canterbury Tales Intro.
TOPICS OF FOCUS FOR READING & DISCUSSION
In addition to the various forms of literature, the rhyme scheme, and the satirical language,
consider the following:
1. Look for examples of irony as it points out the disparity between what appears to be
and what really is, especially in the Prologue.
2. In what ways do the tales match the character of the teller?
3. How do the stories comment on medieval society?