Chaucer originally planed to write 12 stories, 2 for each pilgrim to tell on the way to Canterbury and 2 more on the way back. But he actually completed only 22, though there are 2 more existed in fragments. The work was probably first conceived in 1386, when Chaucer was living in Greenwich, some miles east of London. From his house he might have been able to see the pilgrim road that led toward the shrine of the famous English saint, Thomas a Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered in his cathedral in 117. Medieval pilgrims were notorious tale tellers, and the sight and sound of the bands riding toward Canterbury may well have suggested to Chaucer the idea of using a fictitious pilgrimage as a "frame " for a number of stories. This practice was common in the later period of the Middle Ages. Boccaccio had told 1 tales in his Decameron, each of the ten characters told a story a day for ten days. Another Italian, Gioanni Sercambi, had placed a series of stories in the mouth of the leader of a group of persons journeying on horseback. But it seems that Chaucer was unaware of the Italian precedents; his artistic exploitation of the device is altogether his own.
The structure:
The Canterbury Tales is not merely a collection of stories strung together by some loose thread, as was the general practice for some European writers of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance to assemble a rather large group of tales into a s ingle work of some magnitude, but Chaucer creates in the "General Prologue" a whole gallery of vivid characters from all walks of life and then assigns to each of them some appropr iate tale shedding light on the respective narrator's distinctive personality, and then in the separate "prologues" to some of the tales, and in the "links" that link up some of the tales, the author makes further efforts to show the interplay between the characters as well as their respective traits and idiosyncrasies. Thus the total ef fect of the poem as a whole is a comprehensive picture of the social reality of the poet's day, especially since the pilgrims portrayed include men and women of all different professions, the high and the low, the lay and the clerical, the learned and the ignorant, the roguish and the upright, all excepting the very highest (i.e. the king and the top nobility) and lowest (i.e. the very poor laboring folk) in social rank at the time.
Characters included are:
(1) the monastic orders which include a rich monk, a friar, a prioress with her chaplain, a nun and three priests; (2) the secular clergy which include a parson, a pardoner and a summoner, to be joined by a canon and his yeoman devoted to alchemy; (3)the upper rung on the social ladder includes a knight, a squire, and a yeoman, a wealthy franklin, a doctor, a lawyer, and an Oxford scholar; (4) the trade which is represented by a merchant and a shipman; (5) the burgesses or freemen which include a haberdasher, a carpenter, a weaver, a dyer, a tapestry-maker, a cook, and the Wife of Bath; (6) the rural dwellers which include a miller, a reeve, a manciple and a plowman.
The merits
The merits of the 24 tales are of unequal merits. Taken as a whole they represent practically the whole ran ge of literary genres in medieval and early Renaissance Europe, embracing minstrelcy, chivalric romances, fabliaux, lays, legends, legendary epic sagas, animal epics, mythology, moral allegories and sermons. Though Chaucer did not always succeed in his experiments with all the different popular literary media of the day, He surely had wide interest in numerical literary transactions and innovations not alone in England but also on the content of Europe.
Introduction
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is not the first collection of short stories, and even the form of letting a group of people tell a story is not a new idea. There are ten people in decameron written by Bugacho, who fled to the suburban manor in order to avoid the epidemic in Florence in 1348. They kill time by telling stories. There is also a group of people in The Canterbury Tales, each of whom tells a story. We are interested not only in the story itself, but also in the people who tell it. Every one of them is real. Chaucer introduced them one by one in the introduction. Then, we met them in the story. Soon, we felt that we knew something about each of them.
Chaucer (about 1343-14) was an English poet. Son of a London wine merchant. He entered the court as a COP since he was a teenager. In 1359, he went on an expedition to France with Edward III's troops, was captured by the French army, and was redeemed soon. Chaucer had close contacts with the court. He was a courtier, a customs inspector, a magistrate in Kent, and a member of the County House of Commons. He has been to many countries and regions for foreign affairs, and has been to Belgium, France, Italy and other countries. He had the opportunity to meet Boccaccio and Petrarch, which had a great influence on his literary creation. Chaucer was deprived of his official position and annuity during the period when the asylum seekers fell out of favor, and he was in financial difficulties. He once wrote a doggerel "To the Empty Capsule" to Henry IV, who had just ascended the throne, complaining about his poverty. Chaucer died in 14 and was buried in the "Poet's Corner" of Westminster Abbey in London.
Chaucer's poetic creation can be divided into three periods:
① The period of French influence (1359-1372): he mainly translated and imitated the works of French poets, created Mourning for the Duchess, and translated the French medieval narrative poem The Legend of the Rose in London dialect.
② The period of Italian influence (1372-1386): The poet was exposed to the progressive thoughts of bourgeois humanism. The creative works in this period, such as The Hundred Birds Conference, troy and Clayside, and The Story of a Good Woman, reflect the author's creative attitude and humanistic point of view facing the reality of life.
③ Mature period (1386-14): Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in the last 15 years. He reached the peak of his creation in both content and skill. Heroic couplet, which was initiated by him, was widely adopted by later English poets and was known as "the father of English poetry".
The Tales of Canterbury
One day in April, a group of pilgrims made a pilgrimage to Canterbury and stayed at the Taiba Hotel. The next day, the shopkeeper and pilgrims set out with the author who stayed here. The shopkeeper suggested that everyone should tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two more when they come back. The storyteller who is recognized as the best can have a big dinner for nothing when they come back. Chaucer only completed 24 of the 12 stories in the plan (including two unfinished stories), of which 22 were poetic and two were prose. Every story is preceded by an introduction, and the book has a general preface. In this way, the author connects the scattered stories into one.
The Tales of Canterbury are worth noting:
First, it shows a broad social picture. Pilgrims come from all walks of life: knights, monks, scholars, lawyers, businessmen, craftsmen, farmers, millers and so on.
Second, it comprehensively adopted various literary genres in the Middle Ages, including knight legends, saints' biographies, sermons and fables.
third, the description of the characters and the story itself in the preface and opening remarks are interesting and full of humor.
Fourth, the language has the characteristics of the narrator, and the stories told by everyone reflect the identity, interests, hobbies, occupation and life experience of the narrator.
The story of the priest of Nuni in Canterbury Tales (synopsis)
A cock speaks well.