Geoffrey Chaucer England’s first great writer

/ Geoffrey Chaucer made an enormous mark on the language and literature of England.

Writing in an age when French was widely spoken in educated circles, Chaucer was among the first writers to show that English could be a respectable literary language.

Chaucer wrote in Middle English Canterbury Tales - Middle English

/ Though he may have written some of the stories earlier, most scholars think that he began organizing The Canterbury Tales in about 1387.

/ The Canterbury Tales is a frame story. A frame story is a narrative story in which the main story is composed in part by a series of smaller stories.

/ There should be 120 stories in all, but the text ends after 24 tales.

/ In The Canterbury Tales, the host asks each pilgrim to tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two stories on the way back.

/ The pilgrim who tells the best story will be treated to dinner by the other pilgrims.

/ Canterbury is the location of the popular shrine of Sir Thomas á Becket.

/ Becket was appointed archbishop of Canterbury by his friend King Henry in 1162

/ However, after the two quarreled bitterly over the rights of the church, four of Henry’s loyal knights murdered the archbishop in his own cathedral in / Three years later, Becket was declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. / However, after the two quarreled bitterly over the rights of the church, four of Henry’s loyal knights murdered the archbishop in his own cathedral in / Three years later, Becket was declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.