Tales of Caunterbury

Tales of Caunterbury (or The Canterbury Tales) is a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer. Released in 1400 in an unfinished state, it features tales told by various people on a pilgrimage. It is possibly the most well-known work of 15th century literature/Old English literature and is Chaucer's most well-known work.

Characters[]

The Knight
The Miller
The Friar
The Squire
The Prioress
The Wife of Bath

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Stories within[]

The order of the Tales is a complex subject due to their unfinished state. As such, different editions of the Tales will have different orders for the stories within it.

Fragment I[]

General Prologue: A prologue for the Tales, which introduces the frame story for the Tales - an exodus to the shrine of Thomas Becket.
The Knight's Tale: A tale recounting days long passed, the days of Theseus.
The Miller's Tale: A tale told by a drunken man as an appendix to the Knight's Tale.
The Reeve's Tale: A tale told by the Reeve to mock the Miller (whom mocked the Reeve).
The Cook's Tale: An unfinished tale which begins the trend of vice-filled tales.

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Publisher's summary[]

The procession that crosses Chaucer's pages is as full of life and as richly textured as a medieval tapestry. The Knight, the Miller, the Friar, the Squire, the Prioress, the Wife of Bath, and others who make up the cast of characters -- including Chaucer himself -- are real people, with human emotions and weaknesses. When it is remembered that Chaucer wrote in English at a time when Latin was the standard literary language across western Europe, the magnitude of his achievement is even more remarkable. But Chaucer's genius needs no historical introduction; it bursts forth from every page of The Canterbury Tales.

If we trust the General Prologue, Chaucer intended that each pilgrim should tell two tales on the way to Canterbury and two tales on the way back. He never finished his enormous project and even the completed tales were not finally revised. Scholars are uncertain about the order of the tales. As the printing press had yet to be invented when Chaucer wrote his works, The Canterbury Tales has been passed down in several handwritten manuscripts.

Full summary[]

TBA

Notable works discussing "Tales of Caunterbury"[]

Non-fiction[]

The Literature Book, in which the Tales are put forth as the main example of a frame narrative.

Sources[]

Wikipedia
The Literature Book

Title	Author	Release date	Significance
The Decameron	Giovanni Boccaccio	~1370	Another Medieval anthology with a somewhat similar frame narrative
The Divine Comedy	Dante Alighieri	~1320	Another major work of Medieval literature
One Thousand and One Nights	????	~8th-13th century	Another anthology with a somewhat similar frame narrative
The Heptameron	Marguerite de Navarre	1558	Another anthology with a somewhat similar frame narrative
Cloud Atlas	David Mitchell	2004	Another anthology with a somewhat similar frame narrative