The Canterbury Tales

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

Portrait of Chaucer as a Canterbury pilgrim in the Ellesmere manuscript of *The Canterbury Tales*

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 opening folio of the Hengwrt manuscript contains the beginning of the General Prologue.

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 Bailey, 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. It had a total of 646 pages!

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 pilgrimageand 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. English had, however, 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

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 ('The Prioress's Tale'). This blood libel became a part of English literary tradition.^[2] Jeremy Cohen contends in this regard: "from 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.

Influences

The title of the work has become an everyday phrase and been variously adapted and adopted; for example Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and others. Recently an animated version of some of the tales has been produced for British television. As well as versions with Modern English dialogue, there have been versions in the original Middle English and Welsh.

Many literary works (both fiction and non-fiction alike) have used a similar frame narrative to 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. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins used The Canterbury Tales as a structure for his 2004 non-fiction book about evolution - The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of 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.

1944, A Canterbury Tale, a film jointly written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is based on the narrative frame of Chaucer's tales - that is, a group of strangers, each with his or her own story and in need of some kind of redemption, making their way to Canterbury together. The movie opens with a scene showing a group of medieval pilgrims journeying by foot and on horseback through the Kentish countryside as a narrator speaks the opening lines of the Tales' prologue. This scene makes a now-famous transition to the time of World War 2. The film's story takes place in an imaginary town in Kent and ends with the main characters arriving at Canterbury Cathedral, bells pealing and Chaucer's words again resounding. A Canterbury Tale is recognized as one of the Powell-Pressburger team's most poetic and artful films. It was produced as wartime propaganda, using Chaucer's poetry, referring to the famous pilgrimage, and offering stirring photography of Kent to remind the public of what made Britain so special and worth fighting for. One scene in the film centers on a local historian lecturing his audience of British soldiers about the pilgrims of Chaucer's time and the vibrant history of England.
Pasolini, see The Canterbury Tales (film)
1961, Erik Chisholm completed his opera, The Canterbury Tales. The opera is in three acts: The Wyf of Bath’s Tale, The Pardoner’s Tale and The Nun’s Priest’s Tale.
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. However the film actually has very little to do with the tale.
- In a deleted scene included on the DVD release, Chaucer is also seen with his wife, who comments that his new companions are better than the pilgrims he befriended earlier.

1995, (Se7en) the book is featured in the film where Morgan Freeman is trying to learn more about the murderers background and motives.

References

^ The shrine was destroyed in the 16th century during the dissolution of the monasteries.
^ Alexis P. Rubin, ed. (1993): Scattered Among the Nations: Documents Affecting Jewish History. 49 to 1975. Wall & Emerson. ISBN 1895131103. pp.106-107
^ Jeremy Cohen (2007): Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195178416. p.136
^ Canterbury Tales Museum, Canterbury.
^ "BBC - Drama - Canterbury Tales". BBC Drama article about the series. Retrieved 2007-05-06.

Audio clips

External links

The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems at Project Gutenberg
The Canterbury Tales, complete text and audio at PublicLiterature.org
Modern Translation and Other Resources at eChaucer
Spark Notes review
"Modern English translation of the Canterbury Tales"
The Canterbury Tales Project: publishing transcripts, images, collations and analysis of all surviving 15th century copies
Originals from the British Library high resolution scans of William Caxton's two editions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
The Hengwrt Manuscript: high-resolution image of the first page of the oldest manuscript copy
Manuscript images, transcripts and collations from The Miller's Tale and *The Nun's Priest's Tale
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales ~ Presented by ELF
The Canterbury Tales: A Complete Translation into Modern English

[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". BBC Drama article about the series. Retrieved 2007-05-06.

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