Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

Gillian Rudd (University of Liverpool)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.02: English Writing and Culture: High and Late Medieval, 1066-1485.
Vol. editors: Kate Ash-Irisarri (University of Edinburgh), Rory Critten (Université de Lausanne), David Fuller (University of Durham), Natalie Hanna (University of Liverpool), Hugh Magennis (Queen's University Belfast), Jamie McKinstry (University of Durham), Sarah Peverley (University of Liverpool), Sebastian Sobecki (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)

Dates

First circulation or publication c. 1387 - 1400

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poetry (any)
Story Collection

Resources

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Chaucer is now best known for

The Canterbury Tales

, a collection of twenty-four tales (22 in verse, 2 in prose) told within the framework of a group of pilgrims telling stories as they travel on pilgrimage from Southwark (across the Thames from London) to Canterbury. The setting is fictional, but presented in the famous General Prologue as fact, with Chaucer including himself among the apparently random collection of thirty people assembled one April day, in the Tabard Inn, preparing for their journey to St Thomas à Beckett's shrine in Canterbury. In choosing a pilgrimage as his framing device, Chaucer was not only using a familiar and fairly popular kind of journey, but also one for which people did combine with strangers into ad hoc travelling companies, for their greater safety.…

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2788 words

Citation: Rudd, Gillian. "The Canterbury Tales". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 June 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1340, accessed 26 November 2024.]

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

Dates

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