Why is the Canterbury Tales an important piece of literature?
The Canterbury Tales are also important because Chaucer, who certainly knew Latin, the language of the Church, and French, the language of literature, chose to write them in the common man's ...
What was the motivation to write the Canterbury Tales?
The tales are presented as contributions to a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims travelling from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket. Chaucer’s plan was to write two stories for each of the pilgrims, telling their tales both on the way there and on the return journey.
Who told the stories in the Canterbury Tales?
She has over 30 years of teaching experience. 'The Canterbury Tales' is a collection of twenty-four stories, about 17,000 lines, written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. Chaucer casts himself as the narrator, including himself as one of the story-telling characters.
What is so special about the Canterbury Tales?
What is so special about the Canterbury Tales? One of the reasons Chaucer is so important is that he made the decision to write in English and not French. In the centuries following the Norman invasion, French was the language spoken by those in power.
Who is the author of The Canterbury Tales?
Geoffrey ChaucerThe Canterbury Tales / AuthorGeoffrey Chaucer was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Wikipedia
Who wrote The Canterbury Tales and why was he important?
The Canterbury Tales was one of the first major works in literature written in English. Chaucer began the tales in 1387 and continued until his death in 1400. No text in his own hand still exists, but a surprising number of copies survive from the 1500s - more than 80.
Who wrote Canterbury Tales and when?
Read a brief summary of this topic. The Canterbury Tales, frame story by Geoffrey Chaucer, written in Middle English in 1387–1400. The framing device for the collection of stories is a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury, Kent.
What are the main facts we know about Chaucer's life?
1) Chaucer had at least nine other major works besides the Canterbury Tales, and wrote a number of short poems as well. 2) There's a crater on the far side of the moon named for Chaucer. 3) Chaucer had a part-time government job collecting scrap metal for reuse and also worked as a diplomat.
Who wrote The Canterbury Tales quizlet?
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.
When was The Canterbury Tales written?
1392The Canterbury Tales / Date written
Why did Chaucer write The Canterbury Tales?
The tales are presented as contributions to a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims travelling from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket. Chaucer's plan was to write two stories for each of the pilgrims, telling their tales both on the way there and on the return journey.
What did Chaucer write?
Geoffrey Chaucer is considered one of the first great English poets. He is the author of such works as The Parlement of Foules, Troilus and Criseyde, and The Canterbury Tales.
How did Chaucer plan to write The Canterbury Tales?
Chaucer planned the stories before he wrote them but he did not finish his plan. He planned that each character would tell four stories: two while going to Canterbury and two while returning to London. If Chaucer had finished, he would have written 120 stories.
What are The Canterbury Tales summary?
In The Canterbury Tales, a group of pilgrims traveling to Canterbury Cathedral compete in a storytelling contest. This overarching plot, or frame, provides a reason for the pilgrims to tell their stories, which reflect the concerns sparked by the social upheavals of late medieval England.
How do you pronounce Chaucer?
0:250:57How to Pronounce Geoffrey Chaucer? (CORRECTLY) - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipHow do you go about pronouncing his name jeffrey chaucer jeffrey chaucer pretty straightforward onceMoreHow do you go about pronouncing his name jeffrey chaucer jeffrey chaucer pretty straightforward once you know jeffrey chaucer and now you know here are more videos on how to pronounce more names from
What were the characteristics of the age of Chaucer?
The Age of Chaucer: The Chief CharacteristicsINTRODUCTION: The age of Chaucer is the first significant period in the literary history of England. ... AN AGE OF TRANSITION: The age of Chaucer was a transitional age. ... GROWTH OF NATIONAL SENTIMENT: The age of Chaucer witnessed the beginning of the Hundred Years War.More items...
How many syllables are in Canterbury Tales?
Probably influenced by French syllable-counting in versification, Chaucer developed for The Canterbury Tales a line of 10 syllables with alternating accent and regular end rhyme—an ancestor of the heroic couplet.
What was Chaucer's use of pilgrimage?
The use of a pilgrimage as the framing device enabled Chaucer to bring together people from many walks of life: knight, prioress, monk; merchant, man of law, franklin, scholarly clerk; miller, reeve, pardoner; wife of Bath and many others.
Where did the pilgrims gather?
The 30 pilgrims who undertake the journey gather at the Tabard Inn in Southwark , across the Thames from London. They agree to engage in a storytelling contest as they travel, and Harry Bailly, host of the Tabard, serves as master of ceremonies for the contest.
What genres were presented in the storytelling contest?
The multiplicity of social types, as well as the device of the storytelling contest itself, allowed presentation of a highly varied collection of literary genres: religious legend, courtly romance, racy fabliau, saint’s life, allegorical tale, beast fable, medieval sermon, alchemical account, and, at times, mixtures of these genres.
What is an encyclopedia editor?
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. ...
Did Chaucer complete the full plan for his book?
Chaucer did not complete the full plan for his book: the return journey from Canterbury is not included, and some of the pilgrims do not tell stories. Britannica Quiz. The Literary World. Hey, bookworm! In between reads, try this novel idea: a quiz on all things literature. The use of a pilgrimage as the framing device enabled Chaucer ...
The Canterbury Tales
1. Who is the author of The Canterbury Tales? List five facts about this author’s early life (biographical information). Geoffrey Chaucer is the author of The Canterbury Tales.
Author
Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.
Who published the Canterbury Tales?
The first version of The Canterbury Tales to be published in print was William Caxton 's 1476 edition. Only 10 copies of this edition are known to exist, including one held by the British Library and one held by the Folger Shakespeare Library .
Who was the first person to write Canterbury Tales?
In 1386, Chaucer became Controller of Customs and Justice of the Peace and, in 1389, Clerk of the King's Works. It was during these years that Chaucer began working on his most famous text, The Canterbury Tales.
How many lines are there in the Canterbury Tales?
The Canterbury Tales. The Canterbury Tales ( Middle English: Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of 24 stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. In 1386, Chaucer became Controller of Customs and Justice of the Peace and, in 1389, Clerk of the King's Works.
What order did the Victorians use in Chaucer?
Victorians frequently used the nine "Groups", which was the order used by Walter William Skeat whose edition Chaucer: Complete Works was used by Oxford University Press for most of the twentieth century, but this order is now seldom followed. Fragment. Group. Tales. 01.
What is the name of the book that was first published in print?
The first version of The Canterbury Tales to be published in print was William Caxton 's 1476 edition.
What was the greatest contribution of The Canterbury Tales to English literature?
It has been suggested that the greatest contribution of The Canterbury Tales to English literature was the popularisation of the English vernacular in mainstream literature, as opposed to French, Italian or Latin. English had, however, been used as a literary language centuries before Chaucer's time, and several of Chaucer's contemporaries— John ...
What is Chaucer's magnum opus?
After a long list of works written earlier in his career, including Troilus and Criseyde, House of Fame, and Parliament of Fowls, The Canterbury Tales is near-unanimously seen as Chaucer's magnum opus.
What is the tone of the Canterbury Tales?
Tone The Canterbury Tales incorporates an impressive range of attitudes toward life and literature. The tales are by turns satirical, elevated, pious, earthy, bawdy, and comical. The reader should not accept the naïve narrator’s point of view as Chaucer’s. Tense Past.
What genre is Chaucer's work?
Author Geoffrey Chaucer. Type of work Poetry (two tales are in prose: the Tale of Melibee and the Parson’s Tale) Genres Narrative collection of poems; character portraits; parody; estates satire; romance; fabliau. Language Middle English.
Who is the primary narrator of the pilgrimage?
Narrator The primary narrator is an anonymous, naïve member of the pilgrimage, who is not described. The other pilgrims narrate most of the tales. Point of view In the General Prologue, the narrator speaks in the first person, describing each of the pilgrims as they appeared to him.
Who are the protagonists in Knight's Tale?
In the Knight’s Tale, the protagonists are Palamon and Arcite; in the Miller’s Tale, Nicholas and Alisoun; in the Wife of Bath’s Tale, the errant knight and the loathsome hag; in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, the rooster Chanticleer.
What is the setting of Chaucer's "Tense Past"?
Tense Past. Setting (Time) The late fourteenth century, after 1381. Setting (Place) The Tabard Inn ; the road to Canterbury. Protagonists Each individual tale has protagonists, but Chaucer’s plan is to make none of his storytellers superior to others; it is an equal company.
How many stories are in the Canterbury Tales?
In his later years, he devoted himself to The Canterbury Tales. 2. The Canterbury Tales is still incomplete. The Canterbury Tales is a collection of 24 stories, but Chaucer had planned more than 100. He started writing in 1387 and continued working on it until his death in 1400.
What language did Chaucer write Canterbury Tales in?
When Chaucer penned his magnum opus, most of England’s elite spoke French, thanks to the Norman invasion. His decision to write The Canterbury Tales in Middle English —the language of the common folk—cemented his literary legacy. The epic is regarded as one of the first major works of English literature.
What did Chaucer illustrate?
Chaucer illustrates characters of different classes in medieval England, so the stories are rude, vulgar, moral, and funny, depending on who’s telling them . 1. Chaucer did much more than just write The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer was born to a wine merchant somewhere between 1340 and 1345 in London.
What movie was Chaucer in?
In fact, Chaucer was a character in the 2001 medieval action movie, A Knight’s Tale.
What is Paul Bettany's role in The Canterbury Tales?
Paul Bettany offers comic relief with his role of penniless poet Geoffrey Chaucer, and refers to his work, The Book of the Duchess, in the movie. One of the last scenes is Bettany professing, “I think I’m gonna have to write some of this story down.”. 7. The Canterbury Tales inspired a social justice movement in the UK.
What is the Knight's Tale based on?
Heath Ledger’s A Knight’s Tale was loosely based on a story in The Canterbury Tales. Shakespeare’s play The Two Noble Kinsmen was based on "The Knight’s Tale," the first story in Chaucer’s epic.
Where is the Ellesmere manuscript?
One of the most important versions of The Canterbury Tales is the 15th-century Ellesmere Manuscript. It’s a beautiful piece of work, with illustrations by three artists. There are 22 images of the characters in the manuscript, and a rare portrait of Chaucer. The manuscript is owned by the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.
Who wrote the Canterbury Tales?
Geoffrey Chaucer. English poet Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the unfinished work, 'The Canterbury Tales.'. It is considered one of the greatest poetic works in English.
How many stories did Chaucer tell?
Initially Chaucer had planned for each of his characters to tell four stories a piece. The first two stories would be set as the character was on his/her way to Canterbury, and the second two were to take place as the character was heading home.
What is the meaning of the poem Troilus and Criseyde?
Troilus and Criseyde is a narrative poem that retells the tragic love story of Troilus and Criseyde in the context of the Trojan War. Chaucer wrote the poem using rime royal, a technique he originated. Rime royal involves rhyming stanzas consisting of seven lines apiece.
What happened to Chaucer in 1359?
In 1359, the teenage Chaucer went off to fight in the Hundred Years’ War in France, and at Rethel he was captured for ransom. Thanks to Chaucer’s royal connections, King Edward III helped pay his ransom.
What did Chaucer do for the Queen?
From 1370 to 1373, he went abroad again and fulfilled diplomatic missions in Florence and Genoa, helping establish an English port in Genoa . He also spent time familiarizing himself with the work of Italian poets Dante and Petrarch along the way. By the time he returned, he and Philippa were prospering, and he was rewarded for his diplomatic activities with an appointment as Comptroller of Customs, a lucrative position. Meanwhile, Philippa and Chaucer were also granted generous pensions by John of Gaunt, the first duke of Lancaster.
How many parts did Chaucer write?
Chaucer planned to write the essay in five parts but ultimately only completed the first two. Today it is one of the oldest surviving works that explain how to use a complex scientific tool, and is thought to do so with admirable clarity.
Why did Chaucer resign?
Chaucer eventually resigned the position for a lower but less stressful appointment as sub-forester, or gardener, at the King’s park in Somersetshire. When Richard II was deposed in 1399, his cousin and successor, Henry IV, took pity on Chaucer and reinstated Chaucer’s former pension.
What language is the Canterbury Tales written in?
One of the most significant aspects of The Canterbury Tales is the language in which Chaucer chose to write. The text is in Middle English, a version of English spoken in what is present-day England from approximately 1100 to 1500. Modern readers may not even recognize Middle English as English, but it is an early stage from which our current ...
How long did Chaucer write Canterbury Tales?
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales over the course of about thirteen years, from 1387 until his death in 1400. It is a very long text, with some parts written in verse, or poetry, and some written in prose, or non-poetic, regular writing. The ''General Prologue'' introduces the basic situation, which is that thirty people are planning ...
What is the significance of the Canterbury Tales?
As you can see, Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales holds an extremely significant place in English literature for both the way Chaucer writes in Middle English, the vernacular of the time, and for the way he , as a person from a noble social class, writes about a vast diversity of people and does not always portray ...
How many pilgrims were there in the Canterbury Tales?
Another aspect of The Canterbury Tales that makes it unique for its time and historically significant, especially because of Chaucer's own social standing, is the fact that the thirty pilgrims on the journey are from all social classes, hold a variety of jobs, and have very unique backgrounds and perspectives.
How many stories are there in Chaucer's Pilgrims?
The twenty-four stories that follow can be read in isolation but are part of the collection of stories that the pilgrims are telling each other. Geoffrey Chaucer was born into a wealthy family and moved in noble circles as an adult, holding various positions within the court and higher social spheres.
What language did Chaucer write in?
It may not seem unusual to modern readers that Chaucer wrote in the language that people in his area actually spoke, which is called vernacular, but it actually was a bold decision. Most poets during that time were writing in an earlier version of the language we know as French, or Latin.
How many people are going to see Thomas Becket's shrine?
The ''General Prologue'' introduces the basic situation, which is that thirty people are planning to take a pilgrimage, or journey of religious significance, from Southwark to the Canterbury Cathedral to see the shrine of Thomas Becket. The narrator introduces the pilgrims one by one and, as they gather at the Tabard Inn, ...
Overview
The Canterbury Tales (Middle English: Tales of Caunterbury ) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's magnum opus. The tales (mostly written in verse, although some are in prose) are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they tr…
Text
The question of whether The Canterbury Tales is a finished work has not been answered to date. There are 84 manuscripts and four incunabula (printed before 1500) editions of the work, more than for any other vernacular English literary text with the exception of The Prick of Conscience. This is taken as evidence of the Tales' popularity in the century after Chaucer's death. Fifty-five of these manuscripts are thought to have been originally complete, while 28 are so fragmentary th…
Language
Chaucer wrote in a London dialect of late Middle English, which has clear differences from Modern English. From philological research, some facts are known about the pronunciation of English during the time of Chaucer. Chaucer pronounced -e at the end of many words, so that care was [ˈkaːrə], not /kɛər/ as in Modern English. Other silent letters were also pronounced, so that the word knight was [kniçt], with both the k and the gh pronounced, not /naɪt/. In some cases, vowel letter…
Sources
No other work prior to Chaucer's is known to have set a collection of tales within the framework of pilgrims on a pilgrimage. It is obvious, however, that Chaucer borrowed portions, sometimes very large portions, of his stories from earlier stories, and that his work was influenced by the general state of the literary world in which he lived. Storytelling was the main entertainment in England at t…
Genre and structure
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories built around a frame tale, a common and already long established genre in this period. Chaucer's Tales differs from most other story "collections" in this genre chiefly in its intense variation. Most story collections focused on a theme, usually a religious one. Even in the Decameron, storytellers are encouraged to stick to the theme deci…
Style
The variety of Chaucer's tales shows the breadth of his skill and his familiarity with many literary forms, linguistic styles, and rhetorical devices. Medieval schools of rhetoric at the time encouraged such diversity, dividing literature (as Virgil suggests) into high, middle, and low styles as measured by the density of rhetorical forms and vocabulary. Another popular method of division came from St. …
Historical context and themes
In 1386, Chaucer became Controller of Customs and Justice of the Peace and, in 1389, Clerk of the King's Works. It was during these years that Chaucer began working on The Canterbury Tales.
The end of the fourteenth century was a turbulent time in English history. The Catholic Church was in the midst of the Western Schism and, although it was st…
Reception
While Chaucer clearly states the addressees of many of his poems (the Book of the Duchess is believed to have been written for John of Gaunt on the occasion of his wife's death in 1368), the intended audience of The Canterbury Tales is more difficult to determine. Chaucer was a courtier, leading some to believe that he was mainly a court poet who wrote exclusively for the nobility. He is referred to …