Everything you need to know to read “The Canterbury Tales” - Iseult Gillespie

Summary

• A bawdy opening illustrates the work’s range. The Miller tells a comic, sexually explicit story involving a carpenter’s wife, her scholar lover, and a parish clerk. Its earthy humor introduces one of the central features of The Canterbury Tales: the work moves freely between the low and the lofty.

• The tales are linked by a shared journey and a storytelling contest. Twenty-nine pilgrims meet at the Tabard Inn in Southwark before traveling to Canterbury to visit the shrine of the murdered Archbishop Thomas Becket. The innkeeper proposes that each tell stories, with dinner as the prize for the best one. The collection contains 24 tales, told by different characters.

• The language reflects its time. Chaucer wrote in Middle English, used from roughly the 12th to the 15th centuries. It developed from Old English amid greater contact with European Romance languages after the Norman Conquest of 1066. Though much of its alphabet is recognizable, it includes older letters such as yogh, which could represent sounds like y, j, or gh.

• The cast brings different social groups together. Medieval society was divided among clergy, nobility, and working people, while a professional class of merchants and intellectuals was also emerging. The pilgrimage gives people who might otherwise remain socially separate a reason to meet.

• Chaucer uses characters’ voices to satirize society. Their speech and storytelling styles reveal their outlooks: the Cook’s ribald humor, the Parson’s solemn prose, and the Squire’s lofty ideas are examples. No social level is exempt from mockery.

• The collection offers many literary styles. The Knight’s story draws on romance, courtly love, chivalry, and destiny. Stories by working-class narrators often use comedy, scatological language, sexual mischief, and slapstick. This variety reflects the range of entertainment enjoyed by medieval audiences and helps explain the work’s lasting appeal in both Middle English and translation.

• The work appears unfinished, leaving the judgment to readers. It runs to more than 17,000 lines, but the prologue promises four stories from each of 29 pilgrims, and the innkeeper never announces a winner. The video suggests Chaucer may have delayed choosing because of his attachment to the characters—or simply never completed the plan. As a result, readers can decide for themselves who told the best tale.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Iseult Gillespie — the lesson’s presenter and narrator.
• Geoffrey Chaucer — author of The Canterbury Tales.
• The pilgrims and storytelling characters — including the Knight, Clerk, Nun, Reeve, Manciple, Miller, Cook, Parson, and Squire.
• The innkeeper — the fictional host who proposes the storytelling contest.