'''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.
[1] ''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 are 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 characters, introduced in the
General Prologue of the book, tell tales of great cultural relevance. The first part of the prologue begins with "Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote" indicating the start of spring and the end of a brutal winter. 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 is an overall frame, there is 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
★
The General Prologue
★
The Knight's Prologue and Tale
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The Miller's Prologue and Tale
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The Reeve's Prologue and Tale
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The Cook's Prologue and Tale
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The Man of Law's Prologue and Tale
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The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale
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The Friar's Prologue and Tale
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The Summoner's Prologue and Tale
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The Clerk's Prologue and Tale
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The Merchant's Prologue and Tale
★
The Squire's Prologue and Tale
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The Franklin's Prologue and Tale
★
The Physician's Tale
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The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale
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The Shipman's Tale
★
The Prioress' Prologue and Tale
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Chaucer's Tale of Sir Topas
★
The Tale of Melibee
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The Monk's Prologue and Tale
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The Nun's Priest's Prologue and Tale
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The Second Nun's Prologue and Tale
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The Canon's Yeoman's Prologue and Tale
★
The Manciple's Prologue and Tale
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The Parson's Prologue and Tale
★
Chaucer's Retraction
Some of the tales are serious and others comical.
Religious malpractice is a major theme as well as focusing on the division of
the three estates. Most of the tales are interlinked with similar themes running through them and some are told in retaliation for other tales in the form of an argument. 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. This would have meant a possible one hundred and twenty tales which would have dwarfed the twenty-four tales actually written.
People have sought political overtones within the tales, particularly as Chaucer himself was a significant
courtier and political figure at the time, close to the corridors of power. There are 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. Aside from Chaucer himself, Harry Bailly of the Tabard Inn was a real person, and it is considered quite likely that 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 was not 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 Bailly, the host, that there will be four tales each (two on the way to Canterbury, two on the way back to the tavern). This is not 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 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 is no suggestion of them suffering for their religion. None of the popular
shrines along the way are visited and there is no suggestion that anyone attends
mass, so that it seems much more like a tourist's jaunt.
Chaucer does not pay much attention to the progress of the trip. He hints that the tales take several days but he does not 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 is 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 are 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.
In 2008
The Modern Library will publish a major new translation of the complete work by translator,
Burton Raffel.
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. However, English had 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
Main articles: Blood libel against Jews,
Deicide
Edward I of England expelled all Jews from England in
1290, but
antisemitism did not disappear in the absence of Jews. "In 1385, Geoffrey Chaucer published his ''Canterbury Tales'' which included an account of Jews murdering a deeply pious and innocent Christian boy. This blood libel became a part of English literary tradition."
[2]
Jeremy Cohen contends in this regard: "[f]rom Chaucer to
Margery Kempe, from the cycles of
Corpus Christi Day miracle plays to the poetry of the seventeenth century, European literature retained its picture of the Jewish Christ killer, who inflicted violence on that which was most sacred to the culture and society of Western Christianity."
[3]
The pilgrims' route and real locations
The City of
Canterbury has a museum dedicated to ''The Canterbury Tales''.
[4]
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 had 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.
Trivia
The title of the work has become an everyday phrase in the language and has been variously adapted and adopted. Recently an
animated version of some of the tales has been produced for British
television. As well as a version with
Modern English dialogue, there were versions in the original Middle English and
Welsh.
Many literary works (both fiction and non-fiction alike) have used a similar frame narrative as 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. Evolutionist
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.
'
★
Pasolini, ''
The Canterbury Tales''
★
2004,
BBC, modern re-tellings of selected tales.
[5]
★
2005,
Royal Shakespeare Company, translation by
Mike Poulton
★
2001, ''
A Knight's Tale'' took its name from "The Knight's Tale," with a fictionalized Chaucer portrayed as a friend to the knight. At one point Chaucer declares he will use his verse to vilify two church officials who cheated him; they are a summoner and a pardoner.
'
Further reading
★
Collette, Carolyn. ''Species, Phantasms and Images: Vision and Medieval Psychology in the Canterbury Tales.'' Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.
★ Kolve, V.A. and Glending Olson (Eds.) (2005). ''The Canterbury Tales: Fifteen Tales and The General Prologue; Authoritative Text, Sources and Backgrounds, Criticism. A
Norton Critical Edition'' (2nd ed.). New York, London: W.W. Norton and Company. ISBN 0-393-92587-0. LC PR1867.K65 2005.
★ Thompson, N.S. ''Chaucer, Boccaccio, and the Debate of Love: A Comparative Sudy of the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-198-12378-7.
References
1. The shrine was destroyed in the 16th century during the dissolution of the monasteries.
2. Alexis P. Rubin, ed. (1993): ''Scattered Among the Nations: Documents Affecting Jewish History. 49 to 1975''. Wall & Emerson. ISBN 1895131103. pp.106-107
3. Jeremy Cohen (2007): ''Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen''. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195178416. p.136
4. Canterbury Tales Museum, Canterbury.
5. BBC - Drama - Canterbury Tales
Audio clips
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Audio clip from the first part of the Miller's Tale
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Audio clip from the second part of the Miller's tale
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Audio clip from the first part of the Visioner's tale
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Audio clip from the prologue of the Canterbury Tales
External links
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"Modern English translation of the Canterbury Tales"
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The Canterbury Tales Project: publishing transcripts, images, collations and analyses of all surviving 15th century copies of the ''Tales''
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Originals from the British LibraryHigh resolution scans of William Caxton's two editions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (probably printed in 1476 and 1483)
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The Hengwrt Manuscript: high-resolution image of the first page of the oldest manuscript of the ''Tales''
★ Audio clip from
The Miller's Tale and The Second Nun's Tale
★ Manuscript images, transcripts and collations from
The Miller's Tale and
The Nun's Priest's Tale
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Chaucer's Canterbury Tales ~ Presented by ELF
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The Canterbury Tales: A Complete Translation into Modern English
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