INTRODUCTION TO THE TALES OF CANTERBURY

The Canterbury Tales contains a wide variety of subjects and literary genres. These include the fablieau--a French-styly comic story, outrageous in its plot, whose characters are low class, peasant or bourgeois. An example is the Reeve's Tale; the Breton lay--a song about a rash promise, with supernatural intervention in a love story. It is simple and optimistic in its ending; an example is the Franklin's Tale; the romance/legend--a romance is a substantial narrative about high-born people, usually set far away or long ago or both; their plots are about love or chivalry or both; most have happy endings. An example of one kind of romance is The Knight's Tale; the exempla--a story that teaches a moral lesson; one kind is the miracle story of which the Prioress's Tale is an example; the saint's life; an example is the Second Nun's Tale; the beast fable -a story that, like Aesop's fables satirizes human nature as we see foibles in beasts attributed with human follies. These are often used as exempla for children. An example is the Nuns' Priest's Tale; the medieval sermon--this has a carefully outlined structure; an example is the Parson's Tale.

The styles of The Canterbury Tales range from the elegant opening sentence of the General Prologue to the thumping doggerel of Sir Thopas and the solemn prose of the Parson. The whole is lent coherence and veriesimilitude by a framing narrative: a pilgrimage that provides the occasion for a broadly diverse group of speakers to tell a series of tales.
       Chaucer is unique in his use of such a diverse group to tell tales in such diverse ways. The styles he uses are adapted to fit both the speaker (churls tell churlish stories in churlish ways and gentils tell romances or pious tales with high style–although even the churls can show the ability to use a lot of rhetorical figures (simile, metaphor, apostrophes, rhetorical questions, etc.).
        Chaucer solves the problem of unifying and making coherent such tremendous variety by using the pilgrimage as a frame story and by having the pilgrims compete in telling their tales. The competition encourages the reader to compare the tales, regardless of their differences, and hence invites recognition of the ways they are associated. The competition also allows Chaucer to show his own poetic mastery over a large variety of poetic genres.

        The date of the Tales is not known, but the pilgrimage is traditionally dated 1387 and they were probably written from late in the 1380's until close to Chaucer's death in 1400. The Knight's Tale, the Second Nun's, probably the Monk's and maybe others were in existence in some form before Chaucer got the idea of the Canterbury Tales. The Prologue was probably not written first although some of its ideas seem not to have been carried out in the later descriptions in the links of the tale-tellers.
       Although the tremendous social and political problems of Chaucer's times are not evident from the tales they do make some reference to the Peasant's Revolt and the scandal associated with the pardoners of St Mary's hospital, as well as to the recent inventions of paper and of the mechanical clock (which altered the conception of time from being a part of eternity to being under human ownership).
       The most suggestive source for Chaucer's ideas about the Tales is Boccaccio's DeCameron, although Chaucer never quotes it. Still the resemblances are obvious, although Bocaccio's travelling tale-tellers are more homogeneous--they are all aristocrats. Chaucer's pilgrims represent a wide range of social levels, ages, and occupations. Also, they have little in common except for the pilgrimage.
       There is an air of reality about the Tales. A pilgrimage was one of the few occasions in medieval life when so diverse a group might get together temporarily, have in that group some sense of temporary equality, and have told tales. On the other hand, this is obviously not an actual Canterbury pilgrimage. There is little religious about the actions of the group, none goes poorly dressed or barefoot, and even the holiest pilgrim, the Parson, rides a nag. We are never told that the pilgrims attend Mass, nor that they visit any of the famous shrines or relics on the way to Canterbury. Also, the Monk should not have been and the rascals would not have been in such a group.
       Chaucer uses the journey as a likely occasion and as a metaphor for life in the world. The lifelike quality is due to authentic detail and accurate rhythms of colloquial speech. C. He lets his characters speak for themselves. Also, the tales are very suited to the tellers--sometimes like dramatic soliloquies. The protrait in the GP (which is not an introduction to the tales but to the tellers, allowing for prologues to the tales in the links), the speeches and actions of the character in the links and the tale he or she tells are, in many cases, all of a piece and cannot be fully understood in isolation.
       This dramatic principle extends to the larger structure of the work, in the dramatic interplay between the tales. Some (Friar's T and Summoner's) are parts of arguments. Some (the Marriage Group which will be discussed later) are continuing debates on a common theme. Common themes (questions about Fortune and Povidence, the suffering of the innocent, what women and men most desire, the choices they make and their reasons for making them, the nature of friendship, love, the good ruler, and good living) and subjects provide a sense of coherence and fulness for the work of the whole, despite the absence of a completed narrative framework.
       Some critics argue that Chaucer left the Tales incomplete, although more recently this is being contradicted. The tales exist in manuscript fragments and some seem unrevised. There are no explicit connections between the fragments and so no explicit indication of the order in which C intended the fragments to be read--although internal evidence helps with some order. Also, The Parson's tale and the Retraction obviously belong at the end.