routledge+history+of+literature+in+english

Geoffrey
Chaucer
35
‘Tee hee!’ she cried and clapped the window to
(The Miller’s Tale)
All Chaucer’s earlier writing can be seen to lead to his masterpiece, The
Canterbury Tales. He probably began writing it around 1387 and the work
was uncompleted at his death in 1400. The idea of using a series of linked
stories appears in The Legend of Good Women, but the greatest innovation
is to use the ‘here and now’: the London area and English society of the
time. Originally, 120 tales were planned, with each of thirty pilgrims from
Southwark to Canterbury telling two tales on the way there and two on the
way back. Rather less than a quarter of the project was realised, but the
whole range of genres, styles, and subjects which history and tradition,
England and Europe offered Chaucer were exploited in these tales.
Why Canterbury? Why Southwark? Why, indeed, April, in the famous
opening lines of the prologue?
When that April with his showers sote [sote: sweet]
The drought of March hath pierced to the root . . .
Canterbury and Southwark bring together the religious and the secular.
Canterbury Cathedral was the site of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas à
Becket in 1170, during the reign of Henry II. As such, it became a shrine,
the object of pilgrimage in a British sense, reflecting the duty of pilgrimage
to Jerusalem which was the inspiration for the Crusades in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries. Some critics see a literal ‘falling off ’, or decadence,
in this jolly jaunt. Compared to the high but conventional ideals of the
Crusades and the noble intentions of the heroes of earlier literature, there
is certainly a ‘decline’ to more day-to-day concerns. This is all part of an
underlying reflection on religion and the individual in the modern world,
reflected in many texts, from Winner and Waster to Patience and beyond.
The starting point of the journey, the Tabard Inn at Southwark,
represents the city, the new focal institution in society. The inn’s role
as meeting place and hostelry affirms the importance of drinking and
conviviality in this society. It is not new: the scops sang of the deeds
of Beowulf at feasts in castle halls, and convivial celebration is important
in that society too. But there is a new social order here, with people