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The Canterbury Tales
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The Canterbury Tales (edit title/settings)

by Geoffrey Chaucer (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

With their astonishing diversity of tone and subject matter, The Canterbury Tales have become one of the touchstones of medieval literature.

Translated here into modern English, these tales of a motley crowd of pilgrims drawn from all walks of life-from knight to nun, miller to... read more

Summary edit see section history

This is the story of pilgrims who went to Canterbury Cathedral because they wanted to please God, or in some cases it was just the thing to do. For safety they traveled together, for entertainment they took turns telling stories. The type of story and how its written is tailored to match the... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

This is the story of pilgrims who went to Canterbury Cathedral because they wanted to please God, or in some cases it was just the thing to do. For safety they traveled together, for entertainment they took turns telling stories. The type of story and how its written is tailored to match the character telling the story. The Knight's story, for example, is about romance and is written in the fashion of a period French Romance. The Miller's tales are body, vulgar, and hilarious. Most of the stories are entertaining, but the treasure in "The Canterbury Tales" is that it captures characters common to the period and literary styles popular to the period. It's also the first real work in middle English. In other words everyone spoke English in England but books were written in French or Latin.

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Quotes edit see section history

First Sentence edit see section history

When in April the sweet showers fall And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all The veins are bathed in liquor of such power As brings about the engendering of the flower, When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath Exhales an air in every grove and health Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run, And the small fowl are making melody That sleep away the night with open eye (So nature pricks them and their heart engages) Then people long to go on pilgrimages And palmers long to seek the stranger strands Of far-off saints, hallowed in sundry lands, And specially, from every shire's end Of England, down to Canterbury they wend To seek the holy blissful martyr, quick To give his help to them when they were sick.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Group A:
The Prologue
The Knight's Tale
Words Between the Host and the Miller
The Miller's Tale
The Reeve's Prologue
The Reeve's Tale
The Cook's Prologue
The Cook's Tale
Group B:
Introduction to the Man of Law's Tale
The Man of Law's Prologue
The Man of Law's Tale
Epilogue to the Man of Law's Tale
The Shipman's Tale
Words of the Host to the Shipman and the Prioress
The Prioress's Prologue
The Prioress's Tale
Words of the Host to Chaucer
Chaucer's Tale of Sir Topaz
The Host Stops Chaucer's Tale of Sir Topaz
Chaucer's Tale of Melibee (in synopsis)
Words of the Host to the Monk
The Monk's Tale
Words of the Knight and the Host
The Nun's Priest's Tale
Words of the Host to the Nun's Priest
Group C:
The Physician's Tale
Words of the Host to the Physician and to the Pardoner
The Pardoner's Prologue
The Pardoner's Tale
Group D:
The Wife of Bath's Prologue
Words Between the Summoner and the Friar
The Wife of Bath's Tale
The Friar's Prologue
The Friar's Tale
The Summoner's Prologue
The Summoner's Tale
Group E:
The Clerk's Prologue
The Clerk's Tale
Chaucer's Envoy to the Clerk's Tale
The Merchant's Prologue
The Merchant's Tale
Epilogue to the Merchant's Tale
Group F:
The Squire's Prologue
The Squire's Tale
Words of the Franklin to the Squire and of the Host to the Franklin
The Franklin's Prologue
The Franklin's Tale
Group G:
The Second Nun's Prologue
The Second Nun's Tale
The Canon's Yeoman's Prologue
The Cannon's Yeoman's Tale
Group H:
The Manciple's Prologue
The Manciple's Tale
Group I:
The Parson's Prologue
The Parson's Tale (in synopsis)
Chaucer's Retractions
Notes

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

  • The Corruption of the Church: By the late fourteenth century, the Catholic Church, which governed England, Ireland, and the entire continent of Europe, had become extremely wealthy. The cathedrals that grew up around shrines to saints’ relics were incredibly expensive to build, and the amount of gold that went into decorating them and equipping them with candlesticks and reliquaries (boxes to hold relics that were more jewel-encrusted than kings’ crowns) surpassed the riches in the nobles’ coffers. In a century of disease, plague, famine, and scarce labor, the sight of a church ornamented with unused gold seemed unfair to some people, and the Church’s preaching against greed suddenly seemed hypocritical, considering its great displays of material wealth. Distaste for the excesses of the Church triggered stories and anecdotes about greedy, irreligious churchmen who accepted bribes, bribed others, and indulged themselves sensually and gastronomically, while ignoring the poor famished peasants begging at their doors.The religious figures Chaucer represents in The Canterbury Tales all deviate in one way or another from what was traditionally expected of them. Generally, their conduct corresponds to common medieval stereotypes, but it is difficult to make any overall statement about Chaucer’s position because his narrator is so clearly biased toward some characters—the Monk, for example—and so clearly biased against others, such as the Pardoner. Additionally, the characters are not simply satirical versions of their roles; they are individuals and cannot simply be taken as typical of their professions.The Monk, Prioress, and Friar were all members of the clerical estate. The Monk and the Prioress live in a monastery and a convent, respectively. Both are characterized as figures who seem to prefer the aristocratic to the devotional life. The Prioress’s bejeweled rosary seems more like a love token than something expressing her devotion to Christ, and her dainty mannerisms echo the advice given by Guillaume de Loris in the French romance Roman de la Rose, about how women could make themselves attractive to men. The Monk enjoys hunting, a pastime of the nobility, while he disdains study and confinement. The Friar was a member of an order of mendicants, who made their living by traveling around and begging, and accepting money to hear confession. Friars were often seen as threatening and had the reputation of being lecherous, as the Wife of Bath describes in the opening of her tale. The Summoner and the Friar are at each other’s throats so frequently in The Canterbury Tales because they were in fierce competition in Chaucer’s time—summoners, too, extorted money from people.Overall, the narrator seems to harbor much more hostility for the ecclesiastical officials (the Summoner and the Pardoner) than he does for the clerics. For example, the Monk and the Pardoner possess several traits in common, but the narrator presents them in very different ways. The narrator remembers the shiny baldness of the Monk’s head, which suggests that the Monk may have ridden without a hood, but the narrator uses the fact that the Pardoner rides without a hood as proof of his shallow character. The Monk and the Pardoner both give their own opinions of themselves to the narrator—the narrator affirms the Monk’s words by repeating them, and his own response, but the narrator mocks the Pardoner for his opinion of himself.
  • The Pervasiveness of Courtly Love: The phrase “courtly love” refers to a set of ideas about love that was enormously influential on the literature and culture of the Middle Ages. Beginning with the Troubadour poets of southern France in the eleventh century, poets throughout Europe promoted the notions that true love only exists outside of marriage; that true love may be idealized and spiritual, and may exist without ever being physically consummated; and that a man becomes the servant of the lady he loves. Together with these basic premises, courtly love encompassed a number of minor motifs. One of these is the idea that love is a torment or a disease, and that when a man is in love he cannot sleep or eat, and therefore he undergoes physical changes, sometimes to the point of becoming unrecognizable. Although very few people’s lives resembled the courtly love ideal in any way, these themes and motifs were extremely popular and widespread in medieval and Renaissance literature and culture. They were particularly popular in the literature and culture that were part of royal and noble courts.Courtly love motifs first appear in The Canterbury Tales with the description of the Squire in the General Prologue. The Squire’s role in society is exactly that of his father the Knight, except for his lower status, but the Squire is very different from his father in that he incorporates the ideals of courtly love into his interpretation of his own role. Indeed, the Squire is practically a parody of the traditional courtly lover. The description of the Squire establishes a pattern that runs throughout the General Prologue, and The Canterbury Tales: characters whose roles are defined by their religious or economic functions integrate the cultural ideals of courtly love into their dress, their behavior, and the tales they tell, in order to give a slightly different twist to their roles. Another such character is the Prioress, a nun who sports a “Love Conquers All” brooch.
  • The Importance of Company: Many of Chaucer’s characters end their stories by wishing the rest of the “compaignye,” or company, well. The Knight ends with “God save al this faire compaignye” (3108), and the Reeve with “God, that sitteth heighe in magestee, / Save al this compaignye, grete and smale!” (4322–4323). Company literally signifies the entire group of people, but Chaucer’s deliberate choice of this word over other words for describing masses of people, like the Middle English words for party, mixture, or group, points us to another major theme that runs throughout The Canterbury Tales. Company derives from two Latin words, com, or “with,” and pane, or “bread.” Quite literally, a company is a group of people with whom one eats, or breaks bread. The word for good friend, or “companion,” also comes from these words. But, in a more abstract sense, company had an economic connotation. It was the term designated to connote a group of people engaged in a particular business, as it is used today.The functioning and well-being of medieval communities, not to mention their overall happiness, depended upon groups of socially bonded workers in towns and guilds, known informally as companies. If workers in a guild or on a feudal manor were not getting along well, they would not produce good work, and the economy would suffer. They would be unable to bargain, as a modern union does, for better working conditions and life benefits. Eating together was a way for guild members to cement friendships, creating a support structure for their working community. Guilds had their own special dining halls, where social groups got together to bond, be merry, and form supportive alliances. When the peasants revolted against their feudal lords in 1381, they were able to organize themselves well precisely because they had formed these strong social ties through their companies.Company was a leveling concept—an idea created by the working classes that gave them more power and took away some of the nobility’s power and tyranny. The company of pilgrims on the way to Canterbury is not a typical example of a tightly networked company, although the five Guildsmen do represent this kind of fraternal union. The pilgrims come from different parts of society—the court, the Church, villages, the feudal manor system. To prevent discord, the pilgrims create an informal company, united by their jobs as storytellers, and by the food and drink the host provides. As far as class distinctions are concerned, they do form a company in the sense that none of them belongs to the nobility, and most have working professions, whether that work be sewing and marriage (the Wife of Bath), entertaining visitors with gourmet food (the Franklin), or tilling the earth (the Plowman).
  • Physiognomy: Physiognomy was a science that judged a person’s temperament and character based on his or her anatomy. Physiognomy plays a significant role in Chaucer’s descriptions of the pilgrims in the General Prologue. The most exaggerated facial features are those of the peasants. The Miller represents the stereotypical peasant physiognomy most clearly: round and ruddy, with a wart on his nose, the Miller appears rough and therefore suited to rough, simple work. The Pardoner’s glaring eyes and limp hair illustrate his fraudulence.
  • Springtime: The Canterbury Tales opens in April, at the height of spring. The birds are chirping, the flowers blossoming, and people long in their hearts to go on pilgrimages, which combine travel, vacation, and spiritual renewal. The springtime symbolizes rebirth and fresh beginnings, and is thus appropriate for the beginning of Chaucer’s text. Springtime also evokes erotic love, as evidenced by the moment when Palamon first sees Emelye gathering fresh flowers to make garlands in honor of May. The Squire, too, participates in this symbolism. His devotion to courtly love is compared to the freshness of the month of May.
  • Clothing: In the General Prologue, the description of garments, in addition to the narrator’s own shaky recollections, helps to define each character. In a sense, the clothes symbolize what lies beneath the surface of each personality. The Physician’s love of wealth reveals itself most clearly to us in the rich silk and fur of his gown. The Squire’s youthful vanity is symbolized by the excessive floral brocade on his tunic. The Merchant’s forked beard could symbolize his duplicity, at which Chaucer only hints.
  • Romance: The romance, a tale about knights and ladies incorporating courtly love themes, was a popular literary genre in fourteenth-century literature. The genre included tales of knights rescuing maidens, embarking on quests, and forming bonds with other knights and rulers (kings and queens). In particular, the romances about King Arthur, his queen, Guinevere, and his society of “knights of the round table” were very popular in England. In The Canterbury Tales, the Knight’s Tale incorporates romantic elements in an ancient classical setting, which is a somewhat unusual time and place to set a romance. The Wife of Bath’s Tale is framed by Arthurian romance, with an unnamed knight of the round table as its unlikely hero, but the tale itself becomes a proto-feminist’s moral instruction for domestic behavior. The Miller’s Tale ridicules the traditional elements of romance by transforming the love between a young wooer and a willing maiden into a boisterous and violent romp.
  • Fabliaux: Fabliaux were comical and often grotesque stories in which the characters most often succeed by means of their sharp wits. Such stories were popular in France and Italy in the fourteenth century. Frequently, the plot turns or climaxes around the most grotesque feature in the story, usually a bodily noise or function. The Miller’s Tale is a prime experiment with this motif: Nicholas cleverly tricks the carpenter into spending the night in his barn so that Nicholas can sleep with the carpenter’s wife; the finale occurs when Nicholas farts in Absolon’s face, only to be burned with a hot poker on his rear end. In the Summoner’s Tale, a wealthy man bequeaths a corrupt friar an enormous fart, which the friar divides twelve ways among his brethren. This demonstrates another invention around this motif—that of wittily expanding a grotesque image in an unconventional way. In the case of the Summoner’s Tale, the image is of flatulence, but the tale excels in discussing the division of the fart in a highly intellectual (and quite hilarious) manner.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 11 of 93 in Newsweek's Top 100 Books: The Meta-List. (authoritative list)
This book is in The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge. (community list)
This book is in 100 Fantabulous Book Challenge. (community list)
This book is in Penguin's Top 100 Classics. (authoritative list)
This is book 3 of 113 in Book Smart Reading List. (community list)
This book is in LMU Anglistik Syllabus. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Geoffrey Chaucer (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Nevill Coghill
  2. Mike Poulton

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: n/a
Country: England
Publication Date: Add the publication date.
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 352

Classification edit see section history

  • Copyright Status: Public Domain
  • Library of Congress: 978-1-61523-183-6
  • Dewey: 821.1

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

Movie Connections edit see section history

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

   

Books That Influenced This Book edit see section history

   
  • The Decameron

Books That Cite This Book edit see section history

   
  • Introducción a la literatura inglesa
  • The Know-It-All
  • On Ugliness
  • The Case for Books
  • The Sirens of Titan
  • The Language Police

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