The Canterbury Tales Summary | Chapterly
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer: A Complete Summary "And specially from every shire's end of England, to Canterbury they wend, the holy blissful martyr for to seek." Overview The Canterbury Tales is the foundational work of English literature and one of the most entertaining books ever written. Composed by Geoffrey Chaucer in the late 14th century (left unfinished at his death in 1400), it presents a group of pilgrims traveling from London to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. To pass the time, they agree to a storytelling competition — each pilgrim will tell tales on the journey. What makes the work revolutionary is its scope and humanity. Chaucer gives us thirty pilgrims from every level of medieval English society — knights, monks, merchants, millers, lawyers, nuns, and con artists — each with a distinct voice, personality, and set of biases. The tales they tell reveal as much about the tellers as about the subjects. The result is a panoramic, often hilarious, sometimes bawdy, always shrewd portrait of humanity. Chaucer wrote in Middle English at a time when Latin and French were the prestige languages. By choosing English, he helped create a national literature and proved that...