The Canterbury Tales

Author:

Geoffrey Chaucer

Edition:

Nevill Coghill, Penguin Classics; Revised edition (February 4, 2003)

Summary:

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of 24 stories made up of more than 17,000 lines written in Middle English. It was written between 1387–1400. The tales (mostly written in verse, although some are in prose) are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey 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.

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories built around a frame narrative or frame tale, a common and already long established genre of its period. Chaucer’s Tales differs from most other story “collections” in this genre chiefly in its intense variation. Most story collections focused on a theme, usually a religious one. The idea of a pilgrimage to get such a diverse collection of people together for literary purposes was also unprecedented. Introducing a competition among the tales encourages the reader to compare the tales in all their variety, and allows Chaucer to showcase the breadth of his skill in different genres and literary forms.

-The Canterbury Tales. In Wikipedia.  Retrieved April 3, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Canterbury_Tales