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.”
Short 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.
Detailed Summary
Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales opens in April, when spring rains and the renewal of nature stir people to go on pilgrimage. At the Tabard Inn in Southwark, just south of London, the narrator — Chaucer himself, or a version of him — encounters twenty-nine other pilgrims preparing to ride to Cant...