Canterbury Tales is a novel by Chaucer, an English writer. This painting depicts a group of pilgrims gathered in a small hotel in London, ready to make a pilgrimage to Canterbury. The shopkeeper suggested that pilgrims tell two stories on their way back and forth to see who told the best story. The collection of stories includes 24 stories, among which the most wonderful stories are: love tragedy stories told by knights, knight stories told by Basf people, fable stories told by atonement ticket sellers, animal fable stories told by priests, family disputes stories told by businessmen and touching love generosity stories told by farmers. The works widely reflect the British social life in the embryonic period of capitalism, expose the corruption of the church, the greed and hypocrisy of priests, condemn the asceticism that stifles human nature, and affirm the secular love life.
Canterbury Tales has a high artistic achievement, far exceeding the previous contemporary English literary works, and it is the first model of realism in the history of English literature. The work is a mixture of humor and satire, with a strong comic color. Most of the stories were written in rhyming poems, which had an influence on later English literature. The characters are vivid and the language is lively. Chaucer wrote in the vibrant London dialect, which also laid the foundation for the English literary language. His heroic couplets were widely used by later English poets, so Chaucer was known as "the father of English poetry".