Everything about The Canterbury Tales totally explained
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written by
Geoffrey Chaucer in the
14th century (two of them in
prose, the rest in
verse). The tales, some of which are originals and others not, are contained inside a
frame tale and told by a collection of pilgrims on a pilgrimage from
Southwark to
Canterbury to visit the shrine of
Saint Thomas Becket at
Canterbury Cathedral.
The Canterbury Tales are written in
Middle English. Although the tales are considered to be his
magnum opus, some believe the structure of the tales is indebted to the works of
The Decameron, which
Chaucer is said to have read on an earlier visit to
Italy.
The prologue and individual tales
The themes of the tales vary, and include topics such as
courtly love,
treachery, and
avarice. The genres also vary, and include
romance,
Breton lai,
sermon,
beast fable, and
fabliaux. Though there's an overall frame, there's no single poetic structure to the work; Chaucer utilizes a variety of
rhyme schemes and
metrical patterns, and there are also two
prose tales. The Tales include
Some of the tales are serious and others comical.
Religious malpractice is a major theme, as is the division of
the three estates. Most of the tales are interlinked by common themes, and some "quit" (reply to or retaliate for) other tales. The work is
incomplete, as it was originally intended that each character would tell four tales, two on the way to Canterbury and two on the return journey, for a total of one hundred twenty--which would have dwarfed the twenty-four tales actually written.
Some critics have seen political overtones within the tales, particularly since Chaucer himself was a significant
courtier and political figure at the time. The tales contain many hints at contemporary events, and the theme of marriage common in the tales has been presumed to refer to several different marriages, most often those of
John of Gaunt. Chaucer himself was one of the characters on the pilgrimage, and another character, Harry Bailly of the Tabard Inn, was a real person as well. It is considered quite likely the cook was Roger Knight de Ware, a contemporary London cook.
The complete work
The work began some time in the
1380s but Chaucer stopped working on it in the late
1390s. It wasn't written down fully conceived: it seems to have had many revisions with the addition of new tales at various times. The plan for one hundred and twenty tales is from the general prologue. It is announced by Harry Bailey, the host, that there will be four tales each (two on the way to Canterbury, two on the way back to the tavern). This isn't necessarily the opinion of
Chaucer himself, who appears as the only character to tell more than one tale. It has been suggested that the unfinished state was deliberate on
Chaucer's part. The complete work was 646 pages.
The structure of
The Canterbury Tales is a frame narrative and easy to find in other contemporary works, such as
The Book of Good Love by
Juan Ruiz and
Boccaccio's Decameron, which may have been one of Chaucer's main sources of inspiration. Chaucer indeed adapted several of Boccaccio's stories to put in the mouths of his own pilgrims, but what sets Chaucer's work apart from his contemporaries' is his characters. Compared to Boccaccio's main characters - seven women and three men, all young, fresh and well-to-do, and given Classical names - the characters in Chaucer are of extremely varied stock, including representatives of most of the branches of the middle classes at that time. Not only are the participants very different, but they tell very different types of tales, with their personalities showing through both in their choices of tales and in the way they tell them.
The idea of a
pilgrimage appears to have been mainly a useful device to get such a diverse collection of people together for literary purposes. In fact, the Monk would probably not be allowed to undertake the
pilgrimage and some of the other characters would be unlikely ever to want to attend. Also, all of the pilgrims ride horses, so there's no suggestion of them suffering for their religion. None of the popular
shrines along the way are visited and there's no suggestion that anyone attends
mass, so that it seems much more like a tourist's jaunt.
Chaucer doesn't pay much attention to the progress of the trip. He hints that the tales take several days but he doesn't detail any overnight stays. Although the journey could be done in one day this speed would make telling tales difficult and three to four days was the usual duration for such pilgrimages. The 18th of April is mentioned in the tales and
Walter William Skeat, a
19th century editor, determined
17 April,
1387 as the probable first day of the tales.
Scholars divide the tales into ten fragments. The tales that make up a fragment are directly connected, usually with one character speaking to and handing over to another character, but there's no connection between most of the other fragments. This means that there are several possible permutations for the order of the fragments and consequently the tales themselves. The above listing is perhaps the most common in modern times, with the fragments numbered I-X, but an alternative order lists them A-G, with the tales from the Physician's until the Nun's Priest's placed before the Wife of Bath's. The exception to the independence between fragments are the last two. The Manciple's tale is the last tale in IX but fragment X starts with the Parson's prologue by saying that the Manciple had finished his tale. The reason that they're kept as two different fragments is that the Manciple starts his short tale in the morning but the Parson's tale is told at four in the afternoon. It is assumed that Chaucer would have amended his manuscript or inserted more tales to fill the time.
Significance
It is sometimes argued that the greatest contribution that this work made to
English literature was in popularising the literary use of the
vernacular,
English, rather than
French or
Latin. English had, however, been used as a literary language for centuries before Chaucer's life, and several of Chaucer's contemporaries—
John Gower,
William Langland, and
the Pearl Poet—also wrote major literary works in English. It is unclear to what extent Chaucer was responsible for starting a trend rather than simply being part of it. It is interesting to note that, although Chaucer had a powerful influence in poetic and artistic terms, which can be seen in the great number of forgeries and mistaken attributions (such as The Flower and the Leaf which was translated by
John Dryden), modern English spelling and orthography owes much more to the innovations made by the
Court of Chancery in the decades during and after his lifetime.
In
2004, Professor Linne Mooney was able to identify the
scrivener who worked for Chaucer as an
Adam Pinkhurst. Mooney, then a professor at the
University of Maine and a visiting fellow at
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, was able to match Pinkhurst's signature, on an oath he signed, to his lettering on a copy of
The Canterbury Tales that was transcribed from Chaucer's working copy.
The Canterbury Tales can also tell modern readers much about "
the occult" during Chaucer's time, especially in regards to
astrology and the
astrological lore prevalent during Chaucer's era. There are hundreds if not thousands of astrological
allusions found in this work; some are quite overt while others are more subtle in nature.
While some readers look to interpret the characters of "The Canterbury Tales" as historical figures, other readers choose to interpret its significance in less literal terms. After analysis of his diction and historical context, his work appears to develop a critique against society during his lifetime. Within a number of his descriptions, his comments can appear complimentary in nature, but through clever language, the statements are ultimately critical of the pilgrim’s actions. It is unclear whether Chaucer would intend for the reader to link his characters with actual persons. Instead, it appears that Chaucer creates fictional characters to be general representations of people in such fields of work. With an understanding of medieval society, one can detect subtle satire at work.
Antisemitism
The
Canterbury Tales included an account of Jews murdering a deeply pious and innocent Christian boy ('The Prioress's Tale'). This
blood libel against Jews became a part of English literary tradition. (However the story the Priores tells didn't originate in the works of Chaucer: it was well known in the 14th century.)
The pilgrims' route and real locations
The City of
Canterbury has a museum dedicated to
The Canterbury Tales.
The postulated return journey has intrigued many and continuations have been written as well, often to the horror or (occasional) delight of Chaucerians everywhere, as tales written for the characters who are mentioned but not given a chance to speak. The
Tale of Beryn is a story by an anonymous author within a
15th century manuscript of the work. The tales are rearranged and there are some interludes in Canterbury, which they'd finally reached, and Beryn is the first tale on the return journey, told by the Merchant.
John Lydgate's
Siege of Thebes is also a depiction of the return journey but the tales themselves are actually prequels to the tale of classical origin told by the Knight in Chaucer's work.
Influences
The title of the work has become an everyday phrase and been variously adapted and adopted; for example
Margaret Atwood's
The Handmaid's Tale, and others. Recently an
animated version of some of the tales has been produced for British
television. As well as versions with
Modern English dialogue, there have been versions in the original Middle English and
Welsh.
Many literary works (both fiction and non-fiction alike) have used a similar frame narrative to the
Canterbury Tales as an homage. Science Fiction writer
Dan Simmons wrote his
Hugo Award winning novel
Hyperion based around an extra-planetary group of pilgrims. Evolutionary biologist
Richard Dawkins used
The Canterbury Tales as a structure for his 2004 non-fiction book about
evolution - . His animal pilgrims are on their way to find the common ancestor, each telling a tale about evolution.
Henry Dudeney's book The Canterbury Puzzles contains a part which is supposedly lost text from the Tales.
Stage and film adaptations
The Two Noble Kinsmen, by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, a retelling of The Knight's Tale, was first published in 1613 or 1614 and published in 1634.
1944, A Canterbury Tale, a film jointly written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is based on the narrative frame of Chaucer's tales - that is, a group of strangers, each with his or her own story and in need of some kind of redemption, making their way to Canterbury together. The movie opens with a scene showing a group of medieval pilgrims journeying by foot and on horseback through the Kentish countryside as a narrator speaks the opening lines of the Tales' prologue. This scene makes a now-famous transition to the time of World War 2. The film's story takes place in an imaginary town in Kent and ends with the main characters arriving at Canterbury Cathedral, bells pealing and Chaucer's words again resounding. A Canterbury Tale is recognized as one of the Powell-Pressburger team's most poetic and artful films. It was produced as wartime propaganda, using Chaucer's poetry, referring to the famous pilgrimage, and offering stirring photography of Kent to remind the public of what made Britain so special and worth fighting for. One scene in the film centers on a local historian lecturing his audience of British soldiers about the pilgrims of Chaucer's time and the vibrant history of England.
Pasolini, see The Canterbury Tales (film)
1961, Erik Chisholm completed his opera, The Canterbury Tales. The opera is in three acts: The Wyf of Bath’s Tale, The Pardoner’s Tale and The Nun’s Priest’s Tale.
1975, Alan Plater wrote a modern re-telling of the stories in a series of television plays for BBC2: Trinity Tales. In this adaptation, the stories were told by a party of rugby league supporters on their way to a cup final at Wembley.
2005, Royal Shakespeare Company, translation by Mike Poulton
1995, in Se7en, the book is featured in the film where Morgan Freeman is trying to learn more about the murderer's background and motives.Further Information
Get more info on 'The Canterbury Tales'.
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