Medieval Literature · Text 1
The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer, written c. 1387–1400. Thirty strangers, one road, and a contest to tell the best story.
Picture an inn in Southwark, across the river from London, on a spring evening around 1390. A knight, a cook, a nun, a miller who has had too much ale, and a woman from near Bath who has had five husbands are all heading the same way: to Canterbury. The innkeeper has an idea. Why not tell stories on the road? Best story wins a free dinner.
That is the setup of The Canterbury Tales, one of the best-known works of medieval English literature. On this page you’ll meet Chaucer and his world, ride along with the pilgrims, read his real Middle English (with help), dig into the tales and themes, then test yourself.
Your guide: Geoffrey, Jugami’s teacher for Medieval Literature.
Chaucer and his world
Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London around 1343, the son of a wine merchant. He was not a full-time writer. He was a busy royal servant: a page in a noble household, a soldier captured in France (the king helped pay his ransom in 1360), a diplomat sent to Italy, and for twelve years a customs official at the Port of London.
His work put him in contact with people of every rank, from nobles to merchants and dockworkers, and his pilgrims cover a similar range.
Why English?
In Chaucer’s England, the court often spoke French and the Church wrote in Latin. Chaucer wrote his major poetry in Middle English, the English spoken from about 1100 to 1500. He wrote in the London dialect, an ancestor of standard modern English.
A world shaken up
The Black Death (1348–1350) killed perhaps a third or more of England’s people. Workers became scarce and demanded more. In 1381 came the Peasants’ Revolt, when rebels marched on London. Old ideas about who belonged where were cracking.
When was it written?
Chaucer started The Canterbury Tales around 1387 and kept working on it until his death in 1400. He was buried in Westminster Abbey; his tomb became the start of what is now called Poets’ Corner.
The frame: a road and a contest
A frame narrative is a story that holds other stories inside it, like a picture frame around many pictures. Here the frame is a pilgrimage, a religious journey to a holy place.
The narrator (a character named Chaucer) is staying at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, just south of London Bridge. A group of “wel nyne and twenty” (a good twenty-nine) pilgrims arrives. All are riding about 60 miles to Canterbury Cathedral, to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket, the archbishop murdered there in 1170 and soon honored as a saint and martyr.
The innkeeper, Harry Bailly (called the Host), offers to ride along as judge. Each pilgrim will tell two tales on the way there and two on the way back. Whoever tells the tale of “best sentence and most solas” (the most meaning and the most fun) wins a supper paid for by everyone else.
Reading Middle English: the opening lines
Here are the first 18 lines of the General Prologue, the introduction that sets up the whole work. Read the left column aloud. Pronounce most letters, including the final e in many words (Skeat’s “sote,” meaning sweet, sounds like SOH-tuh). It is closer to modern English than it looks.
Chaucer’s Middle English
- Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote
- The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
- And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
- Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
- Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
- Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
- The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
- Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
- And smale fowles maken melodye,
- That slepen al the night with open yë,
- (So priketh hem nature in hir corages):
- Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
- (And palmers for to seken straunge strondes)
- To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
- And specially, from every shires ende
- Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
- The holy blisful martir for to seke,
- That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.
A plain modern gloss
When April with its sweet showers has pierced the dryness of March to the root, and soaked every vein of the plant in such liquid that, by its power, the flower is born;
when the west wind (Zephyrus), too, with its sweet breath, has breathed life into the tender shoots in every wood and field, and the young sun has run half its course through the sign of the Ram (Aries),
and little birds sing, who sleep all night with their eyes open (nature so stirs their hearts),
then people long to go on pilgrimages, and wandering pilgrims (palmers) long to seek foreign shores and far-off shrines known in many lands;
and especially, from every county’s end of England, they travel to Canterbury, to seek the holy, blessed martyr who helped them when they were sick.
Text: The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, vol. 4, ed. Walter W. Skeat (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894), public domain, via Project Gutenberg #22120. Spellings vary between editions. The gloss is Jugami’s own.
Notice the move. The poem starts with rain, roots, flowers, birds: nature waking up. Then it turns to people waking up spiritually. Spring makes the plants grow and makes people want to travel to a holy place. Notice too the last rhyme: seke (to seek) and seke (sick). Same spelling, two meanings.
Chaucer writes in rhyming pairs of lines with five beats each, called heroic couplets. He was the first major English poet to use them, and they remained a major English verse form for centuries.
The pilgrims
In the General Prologue, Chaucer describes the pilgrims one by one: clothes, faces, habits, and often a tiny detail that gives them away. Medieval people thought of society as three estates: those who fight (nobles), those who pray (clergy), and those who work (everyone else). Chaucer mixes them all on one road.
Those who fight
Nobility
The Knight
A veteran of crusades from Prussia to Spain to North Africa, still in his rust-stained armor tunic. Chaucer calls him “a verray parfit gentil knight” (a true, perfect, noble knight). He is one of the few pilgrims described with almost no irony.
Those who pray
Clergy
The Prioress
Madame Eglentyne, head of a convent. She has dainty table manners, speaks French (the English-school kind), weeps over a trapped mouse, and wears a brooch reading Amor vincit omnia, “love conquers all.” Is she holy, or just elegant?
Clergy
The Monk
He is supposed to live a life of prayer behind walls. Instead he loves hunting, fine horses, fur-trimmed sleeves, and a roast swan. He thinks the old rules are out of date.
Clergy
The Friar
Hubert, a wandering preacher who is supposed to be poor. He gives easy forgiveness to anyone who pays, and he knows every tavern better than the sick and the poor.
Church officials
The Summoner
He hauls people before church courts, and takes bribes to look the other way. His face is covered in red pimples that frighten children. He and the Friar hate each other.
Church officials
The Pardoner
He sells pardons and fake holy relics (pig bones he passes off as saints’ bones). He openly admits his trick to the other pilgrims. Chaucer hints he is the most dishonest of all.
Clergy
The Parson
A poor village priest who walks through storms to visit his parishioners. He practices what he preaches: “first he wroghte, and afterward he taughte” (first he did good, then he taught it). The Church at its best.
Scholar
The Clerk
A thin, poor student from Oxford who spends every penny on books. He speaks little, and only to the point: “gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.”
Those who work
Commoner
The Miller
Robin, a huge, brawling man who can break a door with his head. He plays the bagpipes, cheats his customers, and is drunk before the stories even start.
Commoner
The Reeve
Oswald, a thin, bad-tempered estate manager and trained carpenter. He is so clever with accounts that no one can catch him, and he steals from his own lord.
Commoner
The Wife of Bath
Alisoun, a cloth-maker from near Bath, with a gap in her teeth, scarlet stockings, and a hat as wide as a shield. She has had five husbands and been on pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times. She speaks her mind about marriage at great length.
And one more
The narrator
Chaucer the pilgrim
The narrator seems friendly and a little naive. He admires the Monk’s hunting and agrees his opinions are “good.” But the real Chaucer, the author, knows more than his narrator, and much of the humor comes from that difference. Readers call this a persona.
Mini-game: Name That Pilgrim
Read each clue, then choose the pilgrim. Eight clues, one try each, about 3 minutes. Works with a keyboard: Tab to a name, then press Enter.
Clue: Her brooch reads “Amor vincit omnia,” and she weeps over a mouse in a trap. (Answer: the Prioress. Turn on JavaScript to play all eight clues.)
The major tales
Many tales suit their tellers: the Knight tells a noble romance, and the drunk Miller tells a crude comic story. Here are some of the most important, in the order they appear in most modern editions.
The Knight’s Tale
A romance (a tale of knights and love) set in ancient Athens. Two cousins, Palamon and Arcite, are prisoners of Duke Theseus. From their tower window, both fall in love with the same woman, Emelye. Their friendship turns to rivalry, ending in a great tournament. Arcite wins the fight but is fatally injured; Palamon marries Emelye. It asks big questions about fate, chance, and order.
The Miller’s Tale and the Reeve’s Tale
The Host wants another noble tale. Instead the drunk Miller insists on going next. His story is a fabliau (FAB-lee-oh), a short, crude comic tale about tricksters, foolish husbands, and bodily jokes. A clever student fools an old carpenter into believing a second Noah’s flood is coming, so the student can chase the carpenter’s young wife. The plot ends in a famous, ridiculous chain of pranks.
The Reeve, a carpenter himself, takes it personally. His fabliau answers back: a cheating miller is outwitted and humiliated by two Cambridge students, which lets the Reeve get back at the Miller.
The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale
Her prologue is longer than her tale, and it may be the most famous speech in Chaucer. She begins:
“Experience, though noon auctoritee
Were in this world, were right y-nough to me
To speke of wo that is in mariage”
She argues with the male writers who preached that women should obey. Then she tells a tale set in King Arthur’s court. A knight assaults a young woman and is sentenced to death, but the queen gives him one year to find out what women most desire. An old woman gives him the answer: women want sovereignty, control over their own lives and their husbands. The price: he must marry her. When he lets her choose for herself, she becomes young and beautiful.
The Clerk’s Tale
The quiet student answers the Wife of Bath with a story of the opposite kind of wife. Walter, a marquis, marries a poor woman, Griselda, and tests her loyalty with cruel trials, even pretending to have their children killed. She never complains. At the end, he reveals the children are alive. The Clerk then says no wife today should copy Griselda, which leaves readers arguing about what the tale really means.
The Pardoner’s Tale
The Pardoner preaches against greed, and admits he does it to get rich. His tale is a dark parable. Three rioters set out to kill Death, who has taken their friend. An old man points them to a tree, where they find a pile of gold instead. Each secretly plots to keep it: two stab the third, then drink the wine he poisoned. In finding the gold, they have found death. The moral is the Pardoner’s favorite text: Radix malorum est cupiditas, “greed is the root of all evil.” Then he tries to sell the pilgrims his relics anyway.
The Nun’s Priest’s Tale
A beast fable about a proud rooster, Chauntecleer, and his wife Pertelote. He dreams of danger, argues about dreams, ignores the warning, and is grabbed by a flattering fox. Chauntecleer escapes by tricking the fox into opening its mouth to shout at the chasers. It is a comic send-up of heroic poems, with a lesson about vanity.
The Prioress’s Tale and the Parson’s Tale
The Prioress tells a story of a Christian child murdered in a Jewish neighborhood. It repeats the false blood libel, an antisemitic myth that Jews murdered Christian children, and it names the case of Hugh of Lincoln (1255), a child whose death was falsely blamed on Lincoln’s Jews. Jews had been expelled from England in 1290. Readers today study it as evidence of medieval prejudice, and debate whether Chaucer meant to expose the Prioress or shared her views.
The last tale is the Parson’s: not a story at all, but a long prose sermon on sin and repentance. It turns the pilgrims, and the reader, toward the journey’s spiritual goal. Chaucer then ends with a Retraction, asking forgiveness for his worldly writings.
Themes
Estates satire
Satire uses humor to criticize. Estates satire mocked each class for failing at its job. Chaucer’s twist is that his pilgrims feel like individuals, not just types.
Church corruption
The Monk, Friar, Summoner, and Pardoner all profit from religion. But Chaucer also gives us the Parson. His target isn’t faith; it’s hypocrisy.
Gender and marriage
Who should rule in a marriage? The Wife of Bath, the Clerk, and others answer differently, almost like a debate running across the book.
Social class
A miller interrupts a knight. A cook rides with a lawyer. In a society shaken by plague and revolt, Chaucer lets common people talk back.
Unfinished, copied, printed
Do the math: about 30 pilgrims times four tales each is around 120 stories. Chaucer wrote only about 24 tales, and some of those break off mid-tale. The pilgrims never even reach Canterbury in the text.
When Chaucer died, the tales survived as loose sections, called fragments, so no one knows his final order. Scribes copied them by hand; more than 80 manuscripts survive.
- c. 1387 Chaucer begins the Tales.
- 1400 Chaucer dies, leaving the work unfinished.
- c. 1400–1410 The Ellesmere manuscript is made: a luxurious copy with painted portraits of the pilgrims, including Chaucer himself. It is now at the Huntington Library in California. The Hengwrt manuscript, probably by the same scribe, is in Wales.
- c. 1476 William Caxton, England’s first printer, prints the Tales at Westminster, one of the first major books printed in England.
- c. 1483 Caxton’s second edition adds woodcut pictures of the pilgrims.
Chaucer’s legacy
John Dryden called Chaucer “the father of English poetry” in 1700. His success helped make English a respected language for serious poetry. Shakespeare borrowed from him (his play The Two Noble Kinsmen, written with John Fletcher, retells the Knight’s Tale).
His pilgrims are still read as individuals, not just types, which is one reason the Tales are taught six hundred years later.
Quiz: The Canterbury Tales
Eight questions. Pick an answer for each, then check your score.
Talk About It
- The narrator praises some pilgrims who seem corrupt. Is Chaucer the pilgrim naive, or pretending? Find one example.
- Is the Wife of Bath a strong woman ahead of her time, or a stereotype created by a male author? Could she be both?
- The Pardoner preaches well against the sin he commits. Can a hypocrite still tell a true story?
- If you wrote a modern Canterbury Tales, where would the trip go, and who would ride along?
Sources
- Geoffrey Chaucer, The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, vol. 4, The Canterbury Tales, ed. Walter W. Skeat (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894). Public domain. Project Gutenberg #22120. All Middle English quotations on this page come from this edition.
- “Geoffrey Chaucer,” Encyclopaedia Britannica.
- The Ellesmere Chaucer, The Huntington Library.
- Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website (interlinear translations).
Art: original SVG illustration made for Jugami. Modern glosses and summaries are Jugami’s own.