From Legend to History: The Old English and Medieval Periods A National Spirit

Chaucer’s Guided Tour of Medieval Life and Literature

The Journey Begins During the Medieval Period, traveling became somewhat of a pastime. Chaucer uses this fact to set his story, The Canterbury Tales, in motion. The Canterbury Tales begins with a Prologue, in which the narrator (presumably, Chaucer) meets 29 other pilgrims at the Tabard Inn, located in a London suburb. As the pilgrims prepare for their journey, the Inn’s host, Harry Bailey, sets a challenge to make the journey more entertaining.

The Journey Begins Bailey’s challenge: On the journey to and from Canterbury, each pilgrim must four stories: two on the way, and two on the return trip. The person with the best tale will be treated to a feast hosted by the other pilgrims. The pilgrims accept this challenge, and Bailey decides to join them and judge the competition. This frames the rest of Chaucer’s work, as each of its sections consists of one of the pilgrim’s tales. Chaucer’s Tales, then, is essentially a story about the twenty-four stories told on the pilgrimage.

Snapshots of an Era In the Prologue, Chaucer provides a brief but vivid description of each pilgrim, creating a lively sense of medieval life and pealing back the curtain on much of medieval culture. Begins with the courtly world, which centered around the nobility. Proceeds to the middle ranks of medieval society, which was comprised of learned professionals and wealthy businessmen.

Snapshots of an Era In the Prologue, Chaucer provides a brief but vivid description of each pilgrim, creating a lively sense of medieval life and pealing back the curtain on much of medieval culture. Includes the lower class, which was made up of craftsmen, storekeepers, and minor administrators. Various ranks within the Church, a cornerstone of medieval society, is also represented.

Snapshots of an Era Unique to Chaucer’s Prologue is the way in which he presents his characters and their ranks as real people, individuals who defy categorization. As a result, Chaucer’s work often exposes—and obliterates—common stereotypes of medieval life and society, providing the reader with keen insights into the true realities of the medieval world.

A Literary Tour Popular genres in Chaucer’s day: romances (tales of chivalry), fabliaux (short, bawdy, humorous stories), stories of saint’s lives, sermons, and allegories (narratives in which characters represent abstractions such as Pride and Honor). Within each pilgrim’s tale in Chaucer’s Tales, a major literary form of medieval literature is represented.

A Literary Tour Chaucer wrote much of his work using his own form: the heroic couplet (a pair of rhyming lines with five stressed syllables each). This important poetic innovation, along with several other literary achievements, earned him the title “the father of English poetry.”

The Endless Road Traveling with Chaucer’s pilgrims, a reader may feel that the world is a big place but that, somehow, all of its pieces fit together. Chaucer’s Tales reminds us that every journey from here to there is filled with stories that are waiting to be told.

Chaucer’s Guided Tour of Medieval Life and Literature

From Legend to History: The Old English and Medieval Periods A National Spirit