The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer (1400)
“A drunken, bawdy, razor-sharp portrait of every social class in 14th-century England — told by the classes themselves.”
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The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer (1400) · 700pages · Medieval · 8 AP appearances
Summary
In April, thirty pilgrims meet at the Tabard Inn in Southwark and agree to tell stories on their journey to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The Host, Harry Bailly, proposes a contest: two tales each way, best story wins a free supper. What follows is a cross-section of medieval English society — knight and miller, wife and pardoner, clerk and merchant — each telling tales that reveal as much about the teller as the tale. The collection is unfinished: Chaucer completed only 24 of the planned 120 tales before his death in 1400.
Why It Matters
The Canterbury Tales is the foundational work of English literature. Before Chaucer, serious literature in England was written in French or Latin. By writing in the East Midland dialect of Middle English — the dialect that would become standard English — Chaucer demonstrated that the vernacular c...
Themes & Motifs
Diction & Style
Register: Ranges from elevated courtly romance (Knight) to bawdy vernacular (Miller, Reeve) — the register IS the characterization
Narrator: Chaucer-the-pilgrim is a deliberately diminished version of Chaucer-the-poet. He presents himself as naive, easily im...
Figurative Language: Moderate
Historical Context
14th-century England — the Hundred Years' War, the Black Death, the Peasants' Revolt, and the crisis of the medieval Church: The Black Death transformed English society more than any event since the Norman Conquest. With half the population dead, surviving laborers could demand higher wages, serfs could flee to better lo...
Key Characters
Talking Points
- Chaucer writes himself into the Canterbury Tales as a pilgrim — but a dim, naive version of himself who misses the irony in everything he describes. Why does the author hide behind a diminished persona? What does this double-layered narration allow that a straightforwardly satirical narrator couldn't?
- The Miller insists on telling his tale immediately after the Knight, despite the Host's attempt to call on the Monk. Why does Chaucer structure the tales so that the first two directly contradict each other? What argument about literature is being staged?
- The Wife of Bath opens with 'Experience, though noon auctoritee, is right ynogh for me.' In a medieval world where Latin textual authority was supreme, why is this claim revolutionary? Is Chaucer endorsing her position?
- The Pardoner confesses his fraud to the pilgrims, then tries to sell them the same fake relics. Is he testing them? Is he compulsive? Is he performing? Why does Chaucer leave his motivation unresolved?
- The Prioress's Tale is beautiful poetry in service of anti-Semitic violence. How should modern readers handle a text that is simultaneously great art and toxic ideology? Does recognizing Chaucer's irony elsewhere obligate us to find irony here?
Notable Quotes
“Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote / The droghte of March hath perced to the roote”
“He semed bisier than he was.”
“And Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly, / After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe”
Why Read This
Because every literary mode you will encounter in English — satire, romance, comedy, tragedy, social realism, unreliable narration, frame narrative, metafiction — starts here. Chaucer invented or perfected them all six hundred years ago. The Cante...