The Canterbury Tales is the work of the great English medieval poet, Geoffrey Chaucer and is considered to be his masterpiece. Drawing on the Decameron of Boccaccio (and far surpassing the ambition of that work), The Canterbury Tales combines wonderful poetry with one of the first and foremost psychological studies in the English language.
Writing in a series of prologues and tales, Chaucer passes himself off as a member of a contemporary pilgrimage and uses this position to satirize and ennoble archetypal characters of his day. He also allows them to speak in their own voices, either defending or damning themselves through their storytelling. Brilliant and sparkling--even today when much of his language is no longer widely spoken--Chaucer has a feel for the everyday and the human that is unsurpassed.
The General Prologue--at the beginning of The Canterbury Tales--is spoken from the point of view of the poet himself. He surveys an inn in which are gathered a number of diverse people all of who have determined to go on a pilgrimage to Canterbury cathedral. He describes these characters in all the glory of their tics and eccentricities. There is a knight, a number of religious people, as well as a laity well represented by craftsmen and the lower classes. The room is, quite purposefully, a microcosm of the society of the middle ages.
Their host at the inn suggests that there should be a story-telling contest to pass their time on the road, and that each person should tell two stories in order of their place in the social hierarchy. This is broadly thought to be a good idea, and the begin to tell their tales beginning with the knight--who tells a long romance about two knights desperately in love with the same woman. However, after the knight has finished the order of the tales breaks down, and the story-telling becomes a means of settling rivalries and mocking enemies.
The General Prologue--at the beginning of The Canterbury Tales--is spoken from the point of view of the poet himself. He surveys an inn in which are gathered a number of diverse people all of who have determined to go on a pilgrimage to Canterbury cathedral. He describes these characters in all the glory of their tics and eccentricities. There is a knight, a number of religious people, as well as a laity well represented by craftsmen and the lower classes. The room is, quite purposefully, a microcosm of the society of the middle ages.
Their host at the inn suggests that there should be a story-telling contest to pass their time on the road, and that each person should tell two stories in order of their place in the social hierarchy. This is broadly thought to be a good idea, and the begin to tell their tales beginning with the knight--who tells a long romance about two knights desperately in love with the same woman. However, after the knight has finished the order of the tales breaks down, and the story-telling becomes a means of settling rivalries and mocking enemies.
The Miller jumps in and tells a now famous story about a carpenter who is tricked into thinking that a biblical flood was on its way. The reeve – who the story’s satirical edge is broadly aimed at – then tells a story in kind to get back at the Miller. Story follows story, each of which illuminates the character of the person who is telling it (often artfully discussed by Chaucer, the poet, in the prologues to their tales).
Some of the most famous are the lustful Wife of Bath, who buried three husbands before she was eighteen (and who tells a story of a clever wife who deceives her husband by sleeping with a younger man) and the nun, who tells of a poor child who is killed by evil Jews, but who magically continues to sing after his throat is cut.
Unfortunately for readers, The Canterbury Tales is not a complete work, although it is not known whether Chaucer purposefully left the work unfinished, or whether he died before he could complete the requisite two stories per pilgrim.
Most impressively Chaucer has chosen to take on an enormous task, which is not simply a series of connected tales like that of The Decameron, but is also to create a study of the social fabric of his times. Passing from pilgrim to pilgrim and between their various professions, Chaucer both plays in stereotypes of his day and inverts them.
Some of the most famous are the lustful Wife of Bath, who buried three husbands before she was eighteen (and who tells a story of a clever wife who deceives her husband by sleeping with a younger man) and the nun, who tells of a poor child who is killed by evil Jews, but who magically continues to sing after his throat is cut.
Unfortunately for readers, The Canterbury Tales is not a complete work, although it is not known whether Chaucer purposefully left the work unfinished, or whether he died before he could complete the requisite two stories per pilgrim.
Most impressively Chaucer has chosen to take on an enormous task, which is not simply a series of connected tales like that of The Decameron, but is also to create a study of the social fabric of his times. Passing from pilgrim to pilgrim and between their various professions, Chaucer both plays in stereotypes of his day and inverts them.
He seems to make a very concerted attempt to take on the "voice" of the people he was writing about by letting them tell the tales (a very rare occurrence in the literature of the middle ages). By sublimating his own voice into those of the characters he has created, Chaucer could be seen to be foreshadowing novelists and dramatists that came centuries after him. He also shows an amazing chameleon-like ability to portray characters of every social class.
Satirical, bawdy, sometimes shocking and sometimes beautiful, Chaucer's is a great work of poetry--a poetic novel perhaps, well before its time. Its attention to the nuance of character, whilst painting of the broadest of canvasses, is quite spectacular. The Canterbury Tales is, undoubtedly, one of the great works of English literature.
Satirical, bawdy, sometimes shocking and sometimes beautiful, Chaucer's is a great work of poetry--a poetic novel perhaps, well before its time. Its attention to the nuance of character, whilst painting of the broadest of canvasses, is quite spectacular. The Canterbury Tales is, undoubtedly, one of the great works of English literature.
