The Canterbury Tales
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The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is one of the oldest works of English literature. It was created before the novel format was developed. The complete set of tales no longer exists. They were written in the 15th Century in Middle English. Some of the tales are in verse; others are in prose.
The set-up for the tales is a trip by a set of religious pilgrims. They are on their way to the Canterbury Cathedral, hence the name. The pilgrims are traveling together for safety. And on the first night they agree to take turns, each telling four stories. So, the book is made-up of a series of relatively, unrelated stories: some comic, others dramatic. They reflect a variety of different social positions and points of view.
The names of the different tales are based on the profession of the storyteller. One of the tales, The Knight's Tale was part of the inspiration for a movie, A Knight's Tale. In the movie, one of the characters is Geoffrey Chaucer and small bits of the movie reflect comments from the tales.
A similar book, the Decameron, is also composed of a set of stories told by travelers. (In that case, Italian nobles fleeing the plague by leaving the city for a country estate.)
The text is no longer under copyright, so multiple versions (including translations to modern English) are available online (see references below). People who know modern English can read middle English, although some words are archaic, and others would have been pronounced differently. For instance at the time, the e at the end of many words that is now silent was still pronounced.
[edit] External links
- Project Gutenberg's page for Canterbury Tales and Other Poems
- Wikipedia's article on The Canterbury Tales
