The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales was written by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387-1400. It is a collection of stories within a larger story about thirty people who travel to Canterbury, England for pilgrimage. The pilgrims are from every class and tell stories to each other on the way there. (1)

The actual pilgrimage in the story is not important. Most believe the pilgrimage was just a device to get such a diverse collection of people together for the sake of the story. Some of the characters would probably not even be allowed to take part in a pilgrimage or even want to. A pilgrimage is meant to be a journey for religious purposes, but the characters do not stop to visit any significant shrines or mention religious worship. (1)

Though there were meant to be 120 tales in the book, Chaucer completed only 24 by the time he died. However, the collection has 17,000 lines, mainly rhyming but with some prose. (7)

The reason for making a pilgrimage to canterbury was to visit the site where St. Thomas a Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury was killed in 1170 in Canterbury Cathedral(4)

This tale has been challenged and looked down upon in the US since its first appearances. Changes have been made to it ending in 1928. This book was banned in Eureka Illinois High School for its controversial content(5)

the caterbury tales was written in Middle English. This is one of the ancestors of the english language and cannot be recognizesd as such today. The following is a link to a middle english dictionary. http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m/med/

This is an image of a page from the first edition, printed by Caxton. (2)


(3) 1484 Canterbury Tales Woodcut


This is The Canterbury Tales: Illustrated Prologue [6]


(1)http://www.librarius.com/
(2)http://prodigi.bl.uk/TreasuresImages/Caxton/max/Edn1/001.jpg
(3)http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Canterbury_Tales.png
(4)Literature timeless voices timeless themes
(5)http://www.transportdillo.com/Buga-to-Capi/Canterbury_Tales.php
[6]http://www.scalapublishers.com/cathedrals_.php?ID=47
7. http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=aa08