The Canterbury Tales | Geoffrey Chaucer

Plot Summary

An unfinished, yet colorful collection of tales told by pilgrims on pilgrimage from Southwark, a suburb of London, to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Thomas à Becket. Interestingly, Chaucer makes himself one of the pilgrims. These are middle-class folks (no poor or rich).

Author and Date

• Geoffrey Chaucer
• Considered third greatest English writer behind Shakespeare and Milton
• Born around 1340 – “Father of English poetry”
• Son of a prosperous London wine merchant who traveled widely (Italy, etc.)
• During most of adult life was connected with royal family
• Very educated for his age: French and Italian fluently, as well as Latin, expert in astrology and astronomy, owned 60 books (more than many university libraries of the time)
• Married Philippa Roet, a lady-in-waiting to the queen, around 1366
• In 1368 becomes an administrator for the king

- Foreign envoy for king (equivalent of modern-day ambassador)

- Went to France and Italy

- Exposed to early tremors of Renaissance

· Dante and Boccaccio

• Later a customs official at port of London

- Like to live “as a hermit” when not working

- Read a lot in apartment above gates of London

- Observed throng that passed through the gates on London

· Ideas for his stories

• Wife dies around 1386
• Retires in 1386 and begin Canterbury Tales

- Becomes a Justice of the Peace and Knight of the Shire (i.e., Member of the Parliament

- Appointed Clerk of the King’s Works (upkeep of Westminster Palace and the Tower of London)

- Deputy Forester of the royal forest of North Peterton

• Buried in Westminster Abbey after death on October 25, 1400 A.D. in what’s known as “Poets’ Corner” before finishing the Tales

- Intended 120 stories (two told by each pilgrim each way on journey), but has only twenty-four, some incomplete

• Composed c. 1386-1400

Historical Background

- Born shortly after the beginning of the Hundred Years War between England and France

· 1340: King of England declares himself King of France

· Joan of Arc has “word from God” that Charles VII would be made King of France

· Joan of Arc leads French into battle (1429-1431)

o Routs English troops at Orleans and saves France

à turning point in European history

· English accuse her of witchcraft

o Captured in 1430 and burned in 1431

- the Bubonic Plague (1348-1349)

- and the Peasants’ Revolt (1381) – series of revolts

- 14-yr old King Richard II rides toward peasants in London, their bows taut, and he asks, “Sirs, will you shoot your king?”

· they put down their bows

· he talks with them, grants them his pardon, and sends them back to their homes

- also the time of the Great Schism, with two rival and warring popes (Avingnon and Rome), began in 1378

- It was a depressing time, and drunkenness was common

- Thomas a Becket was martyred at Canterbury in 1170

· Didn’t want royal courts to deal with “criminous clerks”

· King Henry II disagrees and Becket flees to France in 1164

· When returns in 1170, he was murdered by 4 knights who thought they were doing the bidding of the king, who was angry that Becket didn’t want to forgive sympathizer priests

à relevance to “clergy abuse” cases in our day?

- England in 14^th century is still deeply religious and thoroughly Catholic in doctrine and practices

• Time of Wycliffe’s translation of Bible into English and Lollard movement (Bible applied to all of life)
• He was at Oxford and railed against wealth and out-of-touchness of the church

- St. Francis of Assisi in 13^th century lived life of poverty, but didn’t want to force it on others

• band of “poor preachers,” scholars who spent their free time preaching in marketplace and village greens

o Parson’s Tale – is Chaucer a Lollard?

- Pilgrimages very common in Middle Ages

- Chaucer could probably look out his window in London and see the pilgrims en route to Canterbury

- He himself may have gone of this pilgrimage

- Chaucer the first major writer to write in English

- French by Chaucer’s time has become a foreign language

- 1396 manual for English travelers going to inns run by French-speakers

o French phrases

o “Please keep your inn clean”

o “Here is how to serve wholesome food,” etc.

Themes/Observations

- point of the Prologue?: we’re all sinners; “love the man but hate his sin”

- Interestingly, he ends with the Parson’s Tale and a Retraction – Why?

o Theories from http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng330/chaucerparson.htm:

à Baldwin, Unity of Canterbury Tales (1955): PT is the moral center of CT and its statements about sin can be taken as GC's intended judgments of individual tellers and tales (also Huppe, A Reading of the Canterbury Tales, 1964).

à Ruggiers ('65), Jordan ('67), Norton-Smith ('74) and others read the tale as a more general moral description of society's flaws, a corrective designed to bring CT to closure in as a piece of Christian morality.

à E.T. Donaldson, Speaking of Chaucer (1970) attacked the direct application of ParsT doctrine as an interpretive "key" to unlock the other tales' sentence.

à Finlayson ('71), Allen ('73), and Kaske ('75) read the Parson's portrait and persona as ironic, a turgid moralist whose judgment is in no way superior to that of other tellers. Wenzel and Delasanta ('78) have attacked that reading.

- Device of the pilgrimage allows examination of a cross-section of humanity

- Tension between secular and religious

- Keen insights into human nature

- How looks can be deceiving

- The role of pleasure in reading literature

o “…the Christian…has no objection to comedies that merely amuse and tales that merely refresh…We can play, as we can eat, to the glory of God.” -- C.S. Lewis

- Others?