Page 73 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

British Poetry Digvijay Pandya, Lovely Professional University

Notes Unit 8: Geoffrey Chaucer

CONTENTS
Objectives

Introduction
8.1 The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Non-detailed Study): Introduction to the Text

8.2 Prologue to the Canterbury Tales: Introduction to the Author
8.3 Summary

8.4 Keywords

8.5 Review Questions
8.6 Further Readings

Objectives

After studying this unit, you will be able to:
• Know the introduction to the text, the Canterbury Tales
• Know about the author, Geoffrey Chaucer.

Introduction

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the
end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as
they travel together on a journey from Southwark to 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.
Following a long list of works written earlier in his career, including Troilus and Criseyde, House
of Fame, and Parliament of Fowls, the Canterbury Tales was Chaucer’s magnum opus. He uses the
tales and the descriptions of the characters to paint an ironic and critical portrait of English society
at the time, and particularly of the Church. Structurally, the collection bears the influence of The
Decameron, which Chaucer is said to have come across during his first diplomatic mission to Italy
in 1372. However, Chaucer peoples his tales with ‘sondry folk’ rather than Boccaccio’s fleeing nobles.

8.1 The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Non-detailed Study):
Introduction to the Text

The Canterbury Tales is at once one of the most famous and most frustrating works of literature ever
written. Since its composition in late 1300s, critics have continued to mine new riches from its complex
ground, and started new arguments about the text and its interpretation. Chaucer’s richly detailed
text, so Dryden said, was “God’s plenty”, and the rich variety of the Tales is partly perhaps the reason
for its success. It is both one long narrative and an encyclopedia of shorter narratives; it is both one
large drama, and a compilation of most literary forms known to medieval literature: romance, fabliau,
Breton lay, moral fable, verse romance, beast fable, prayer to the Virgin and so the list goes on. No

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