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How Does Using Art Such as Poetry Works to Show Societal Concern in Cantebury Tale

Collection of 24 stories written in Middle English past Geoffrey Chaucer

The Canterbury Tales
Canterbury Tales.png

A woodcut from William Caxton's second edition of The Canterbury Tales printed in 1483
Author Geoffrey Chaucer
Original championship Tales of Caunterbury
Land England
Linguistic communication Eye English
Fix in Kingdom of England, 14th century

Publication date

 c. 1400 (unfinished at Chaucer's death)

Dewey Decimal

 821.ane
LC Class PR1870 .A1
Text The Canterbury Tales at Wikisource

The Canterbury Tales (Middle English: Tales of Caunterbury [2]) is a collection of 20-iv stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Center English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400.[3] It is widely regarded as Chaucer's magnum opus. The tales (by and large written in verse, although some are in prose) are presented every bit part of a story-telling competition past a group of pilgrims as they travel together from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their render.

It has been suggested that the greatest contribution of The Canterbury Tales to English literature was the popularisation of the English vernacular in mainstream literature, as opposed to French, Italian or Latin. English had, however, been used every bit a literary language centuries before Chaucer's time, and several of Chaucer's contemporaries—John Gower, William Langland, the Pearl Poet, and Julian of Norwich—also wrote major literary works in English. It is unclear to what extent Chaucer was seminal in this evolution of literary preference.

The Canterbury Tales is by and large thought to accept been incomplete at the end of Chaucer'south life. In the Full general Prologue, some 30 pilgrims are introduced. According to the Prologue, Chaucer's intention was to write iv stories from the perspective of each pilgrim, 2 each on the way to and from their ultimate destination, St. Thomas Becket's shrine (making for a total of about 120 stories). Although peradventure incomplete, The Canterbury Tales is revered every bit one of the most important works in English literature.

Text

The question of whether The Canterbury Tales is a finished piece of work has not been answered to date. At that place are 84 manuscripts and 4 incunabula (printed earlier 1500) editions[4] of the work, more than for whatever other colloquial English literary text with the exception of The Prick of Conscience. This is taken every bit evidence of the Tales' popularity in the century after Chaucer's expiry.[5] 50-five of these manuscripts are thought to have been originally complete, while 28 are so fragmentary that it is difficult to ascertain whether they were copied individually or as function of a set up.[vi] The Tales vary in both modest and major ways from manuscript to manuscript; many of the pocket-sized variations are due to copyists' errors, while information technology is suggested that in other cases Chaucer both added to his piece of work and revised information technology every bit it was being copied and possibly as it was being distributed.

Even the oldest surviving manuscripts of the Tales are non Chaucer's originals. The very oldest is probably MS Peniarth 392 D (chosen "Hengwrt"), written by a scribe shortly after Chaucer's death. Another famous instance is the Ellesmere Manuscript, a manuscript handwritten by one person with illustrations by several illustrators; the tales are put in an order that many after editors have followed for centuries.[7] [8] The get-go version of The Canterbury Tales to be published in print was William Caxton'due south 1476 edition. Only x copies of this edition are known to exist, including 1 held by the British Library and one held past the Folger Shakespeare Library.

In 2004, Linne Mooney claimed that she was able to place the scrivener who worked for Chaucer as an Adam Pinkhurst. Mooney, then a professor at the University of Maine and a visiting fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, said she could lucifer Pinkhurst's oath in the Scriveners' Common Newspaper to the handwriting in the Hengwrt manuscript, which she theorized might have been transcribed from Chaucer's working re-create.[9] [10] Although this identification has been generally accustomed, some scholars accept expressed doubts.[11]

Order

In the absence of consensus as to whether or not a consummate version of the Tales exists, at that place is likewise no general agreement regarding the order in which Chaucer intended the stories to be placed.[12] [13]

Textual and manuscript clues accept been adduced to back up the two most popular mod methods of ordering the tales. Some scholarly editions divide the Tales into ten "Fragments". The tales that make upwards a Fragment are closely related and comprise internal indications of their gild of presentation, unremarkably with i character speaking to and then stepping bated for another character. However, between Fragments, the connection is less obvious. Consequently, in that location are several possible orders; the one most oftentimes seen in modern editions follows the numbering of the Fragments (ultimately based on the Ellesmere order).[12] Victorians frequently used the nine "Groups", which was the order used by Walter William Skeat whose edition Chaucer: Complete Works was used by Oxford University Press for most of the twentieth century, merely this order is currently seldom followed.[12]

Fragment Group Tales
01Fragment I A

General Prologue
The Knight's Tale
The Miller's Tale
The Reeve's Tale
The Cook's Tale

02Fragment 2 B1 The Human being of Law'southward Tale
03Fragment III D The Wife of Bath's Tale
The Friar's Tale
The Summoner's Tale
04Fragment IV E The Clerk's Tale
The Merchant's Tale
05Fragment Five F The Squire's Tale
The Franklin's Tale
06Fragment VI C The Md's Tale
The Pardoner'southward Tale
07Fragment Vii B2 The Shipman'south Tale
The Prioress's Tale
Sir Thopas' Tale
The Tale of Melibee
The Monk'south Tale
The Nun'southward Priest's Tale
08Fragment VIII G The Second Nun's Tale
The Canon's Yeoman's Tale
09Fragment IX H The Manciple's Tale
tenFragment X I The Parson's Tale

An culling ordering (seen in the early-fifteenth century manuscript Harley MS. 7334) places Fragment VIII before VI. Fragments I and II almost e'er follow each other, simply as Half dozen and VII, IX and Ten practise in the oldest manuscripts. Fragments 4 and V, by contrast, vary in location from manuscript to manuscript.

Language

Chaucer wrote in a London dialect of late Middle English, which has clear differences from Mod English. From philological research, some facts are known most the pronunciation of English language during the fourth dimension of Chaucer. Chaucer pronounced -e at the finish of many words, and so that intendance was [ˈkaːrə], not as in Mod English language. Other silent letters were besides pronounced, so that the word knight was [kniçt], with both the k and the gh pronounced, not . In some cases, vowel letters in Center English language were pronounced very differently from Modernistic English, because the Not bad Vowel Shift had not withal happened. For case, the long due east in wepyng "weeping" was pronounced every bit [eː], as in modern German or Italian, not as . Below is an IPA transcription of the opening lines of The Merchant's Prologue:

No manuscript exists in Chaucer's ain hand; all extant copies were made by scribes. Because the last -e audio was lost presently after Chaucer's time, scribes did not accurately re-create it, and this gave scholars the impression that Chaucer himself was inconsistent in using it.[16] It has now been established, however, that -e was an of import office of Chaucer's grammer, and helped to distinguish atypical adjectives from plural and subjunctive verbs from indicative.[17]

Sources

No other work prior to Chaucer's is known to have set a collection of tales within the framework of pilgrims on a pilgrimage. It is obvious, however, that Chaucer borrowed portions, sometimes very large portions, of his stories from before stories, and that his piece of work was influenced by the general state of the literary earth in which he lived. Storytelling was the main amusement in England at the time, and storytelling contests had been around for hundreds of years. In 14th-century England the English Pui was a group with an appointed leader who would judge the songs of the grouping. The winner received a crown and, equally with the winner of The Canterbury Tales, a free dinner. It was mutual for pilgrims on a pilgrimage to have a chosen "main of ceremonies" to guide them and organise the journey.[18] Harold Bloom suggests that the structure is mostly original, just inspired by the "pilgrim" figures of Dante and Virgil in The Divine Comedy.[19] New research suggests that the Full general Prologue, in which the innkeeper and host Harry Bailey introduces each pilgrim, is a pastiche of the historical Harry Bailey's surviving 1381 poll-taxation account of Southwark's inhabitants.[20]

The Canterbury Tales contains more than parallels to the Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio, than any other work. Like the Tales, the Decameron features a frame tale in which several different narrators tell a serial of stories. (In the Decameron, the characters have fled to the countryside to escape the Black Decease.) Information technology ends with an apology past Boccaccio, much like Chaucer'south Retraction to the Tales. A quarter of the tales in The Canterbury Tales parallel a tale in the Decameron, although almost of them have closer parallels in other stories. Some scholars thus observe it unlikely that Chaucer had a re-create of the work on hand, surmising instead that he may take but read the Decameron at some point.[21] Chaucer may have read the Decameron during his first diplomatic mission to Italy in 1372.[ citation needed ] Chaucer used a wide diverseness of sources, merely some in particular were used frequently over several tales, among them the Bible, Classical poetry by Ovid, and the works of contemporary Italian writers Petrarch and Dante. Chaucer was the first author to employ the work of these last two.[ citation needed ] Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy appears in several tales, as practice the works of John Gower, a friend of Chaucer's. Chaucer as well seems to have borrowed from numerous religious encyclopaedias and liturgical writings, such as John Bromyard'southward Summa praedicantium, a preacher's handbook, and Jerome'south Adversus Jovinianum.[22] Many scholars say there is a skillful possibility Chaucer met Petrarch or Boccaccio.[23] [24] [25] [26] [27]

Genre and structure

The Canterbury Tales is a drove of stories built effectually a frame tale, a mutual and already long established genre in this menses. Chaucer's Tales differs from about other story "collections" in this genre chiefly in its intense variation. Most story collections focused on a theme, usually a religious 1. Even in the Decameron, storytellers are encouraged to stick to the theme decided on for the day. The idea of a pilgrimage to get such a diverse collection of people together for literary purposes was also unprecedented, though "the association of pilgrims and storytelling was a familiar i".[28] Introducing a contest amidst the tales encourages the reader to compare the tales in all their variety, and allows Chaucer to showcase the breadth of his skill in dissimilar genres and literary forms.[29]

While the construction of the Tales is largely linear, with one story post-obit another, information technology is likewise much more than that. In the General Prologue, Chaucer describes not the tales to exist told, simply the people who volition tell them, making it clear that structure will depend on the characters rather than a general theme or moral. This idea is reinforced when the Miller interrupts to tell his tale after the Knight has finished his. Having the Knight go first gives ane the thought that all will tell their stories by form, with the Monk post-obit the Knight. However, the Miller'southward suspension makes it clear that this structure will be abandoned in favour of a free and open exchange of stories amongst all classes present. General themes and points of view arise as the characters tell their tales, which are responded to past other characters in their own tales, sometimes after a long lapse in which the theme has not been addressed.[30]

Lastly, Chaucer does not pay much attention to the progress of the trip, to the fourth dimension passing as the pilgrims travel, or to specific locations along the way to Canterbury. His writing of the story seems focused primarily on the stories being told, and non on the pilgrimage itself.[31]

Fashion

Title folio of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the hand of "Scribe B", identified every bit Adam Pinkhurst, c.  1400.

The variety of Chaucer'south tales shows the latitude of his skill and his familiarity with many literary forms, linguistic styles, and rhetorical devices. Medieval schools of rhetoric at the time encouraged such multifariousness, dividing literature (as Virgil suggests) into high, eye, and low styles every bit measured past the density of rhetorical forms and vocabulary. Another popular method of division came from St. Augustine, who focused more on audition response and less on subject matter (a Virgilian concern). Augustine divided literature into "majestic persuades", "temperate pleases", and "subdued teaches". Writers were encouraged to write in a fashion that kept in listen the speaker, subject, audience, purpose, manner, and occasion. Chaucer moves freely between all of these styles, showing favouritism to none.[32] He not but considers the readers of his work every bit an audience, but the other pilgrims within the story as well, creating a multi-layered rhetoric.[33]

With this, Chaucer avoids targeting any specific audience or social class of readers, focusing instead on the characters of the story and writing their tales with a skill proportional to their social status and learning. All the same, fifty-fifty the everyman characters, such as the Miller, show surprising rhetorical ability, although their subject affair is more than lowbrow. Vocabulary besides plays an important part, equally those of the higher classes refer to a adult female as a "lady", while the lower classes use the word "wenche", with no exceptions. At times the aforementioned word volition mean entirely different things betwixt classes. The word "pitee", for example, is a noble concept to the upper classes, while in the Merchant's Tale it refers to sexual intercourse. Again, withal, tales such as the Nun's Priest's Tale show surprising skill with words amidst the lower classes of the group, while the Knight's Tale is at times extremely simple.[34]

Chaucer uses the same meter throughout almost all of his tales, with the exception of Sir Thopas and his prose tales. Information technology is a decasyllable line, probably borrowed from French and Italian forms, with riding rhyme and, occasionally, a caesura in the middle of a line. His meter would afterward develop into the heroic meter of the 15th and 16th centuries and is an ancestor of iambic pentameter. He avoids allowing couplets to get likewise prominent in the poem, and four of the tales (the Man of Constabulary's, Clerk's, Prioress', and Second Nun's) use rhyme royal.[35]

Historical context and themes

In 1386, Chaucer became Controller of Customs and Justice of the Peace and, in 1389, Clerk of the King's Works.[36] It was during these years that Chaucer began working on The Canterbury Tales.

The end of the fourteenth century was a turbulent time in English history. The Catholic Church building was in the midst of the Western Schism and, although it was withal the only Christian dominance in Western Europe, information technology was the field of study of heavy controversy. Lollardy, an early English language religious motility led by John Wycliffe, is mentioned in the Tales, which likewise mention a specific incident involving pardoners (sellers of indulgences, which were believed to relieve the temporal punishment due for sins that were already forgiven in the Sacrament of Confession) who nefariously claimed to exist collecting for St. Mary Rouncesval hospital in England. The Canterbury Tales is amidst the outset English literary works to mention paper, a relatively new invention that allowed dissemination of the written discussion never before seen in England. Political clashes, such equally the 1381 Peasants' Revolt and clashes ending in the deposing of King Richard II, farther reveal the complex turmoil surrounding Chaucer in the fourth dimension of the Tales' writing. Many of his close friends were executed and he himself moved to Kent to get away from events in London.[37]

While some readers look to interpret the characters of The Canterbury Tales as historical figures, other readers choose to interpret its significance in less literal terms. After assay of Chaucer'southward diction and historical context, his piece of work appears to develop a critique of society during his lifetime. Within a number of his descriptions, his comments can appear complimentary in nature, merely through clever language, the statements are ultimately critical of the pilgrim's deportment. Information technology is unclear whether Chaucer would intend for the reader to link his characters with bodily persons. Instead, it appears that Chaucer creates fictional characters to be general representations of people in such fields of work. With an understanding of medieval lodge, one can detect subtle satire at work.[38]

Organized religion

The Tales reflect various views of the Church in Chaucer'due south England. After the Blackness Death, many Europeans began to question the potency of the established Church. Some turned to lollardy, while others chose less extreme paths, starting new monastic orders or smaller movements exposing church building corruption in the behaviour of the clergy, faux church relics or abuse of indulgences.[39] Several characters in the Tales are religious figures, and the very setting of the pilgrimage to Canterbury is religious (although the prologue comments ironically on its but seasonal attractions), making religion a significant theme of the work.[40]

Ii characters, the Pardoner and the Summoner, whose roles apply the Church's secular power, are both portrayed every bit deeply decadent, greedy, and abusive. Pardoners in Chaucer'due south day were those people from whom i bought Church building "indulgences" for forgiveness of sins, who were guilty of abusing their office for their own proceeds. Chaucer'due south Pardoner openly admits the corruption of his practice while hawking his wares.[41] Summoners were Church officers who brought sinners to the Church court for possible excommunication and other penalties. Decadent summoners would write false citations and frighten people into bribing them to protect their interests. Chaucer's Summoner is portrayed equally guilty of the very kinds of sins for which he is threatening to bring others to courtroom, and is hinted as having a corrupt relationship with the Pardoner.[42] In The Friar'southward Tale, i of the characters is a summoner who is shown to be working on the side of the devil, non God.[43]

Churchmen of various kinds are represented past the Monk, the Prioress, the Nun'southward Priest, and the 2d Nun. Monastic orders, which originated from a want to follow an ascetic lifestyle separated from the earth, had by Chaucer's time become increasingly entangled in worldly matters. Monasteries frequently controlled huge tracts of state on which they fabricated significant sums of money, while peasants worked in their employ.[44] The 2nd Nun is an example of what a Nun was expected to be: her tale is near a woman whose chaste example brings people into the church. The Monk and the Prioress, on the other hand, while not as corrupt as the Summoner or Pardoner, fall far short of the ideal for their orders. Both are expensively dressed, show signs of lives of luxury and flirtatiousness and show a lack of spiritual depth.[45] The Prioress'due south Tale is an account of Jews murdering a deeply pious and innocent Christian boy, a blood libel against Jews that became a part of English literary tradition.[46] The story did not originate in the works of Chaucer and was well known in the 14th century.[47]

Pilgrimage was a very prominent characteristic of medieval society. The ultimate pilgrimage destination was Jerusalem,[48] just within England Canterbury was a popular destination. Pilgrims would journey to cathedrals that preserved relics of saints, assertive that such relics held miraculous powers. Saint Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, had been murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights of Henry II during a disagreement between Church and Crown. Miracle stories connected to his remains sprang upward soon later on his death, and the cathedral became a pop pilgrimage destination.[49] The pilgrimage in the work ties all of the stories together and may be considered a representation of Christians' striving for sky, despite weaknesses, disagreement, and diverseness of stance.[50]

Social grade and convention

Bors' Dilemma – he chooses to salve a maiden rather than his brother Lionel

The upper course or nobility, represented importantly by the Knight and his Squire, was in Chaucer's time steeped in a culture of chivalry and courtliness. Nobles were expected to exist powerful warriors who could be ruthless on the battlefield yet mannerly in the King'south Court and Christian in their actions.[51] Knights were expected to form a potent social bond with the men who fought aslope them, but an even stronger bond with a adult female whom they idealised to strengthen their fighting power.[52] Though the aim of chivalry was to noble action, its conflicting values oft degenerated into violence. Church building leaders oft tried to place restrictions on jousts and tournaments, which at times ended in the death of the loser. The Knight's Tale shows how the brotherly love of two swain knights turns into a deadly feud at the sight of a woman whom both idealise. To win her, both are willing to fight to the decease. Chivalry was on the decline in Chaucer's day, and information technology is possible that The Knight'due south Tale was intended to show its flaws, although this is disputed.[53] Chaucer himself had fought in the Hundred Years' State of war under Edward III, who heavily emphasised chivalry during his reign.[54] Two tales, Sir Topas and The Tale of Melibee, are told by Chaucer himself, who is travelling with the pilgrims in his own story. Both tales seem to focus on the ill-furnishings of chivalry—the first making fun of chivalric rules and the 2d warning against violence.[55]

The Tales constantly reflect the disharmonize between classes. For instance, the division of the three estates: the characters are all divided into three distinct classes, the classes beingness "those who pray" (the clergy), "those who fight" (the dignity), and "those who work" (the commoners and peasantry).[56] Most of the tales are interlinked by common themes, and some "quit" (respond to or retaliate against) other tales. Convention is followed when the Knight begins the game with a tale, as he represents the highest social course in the group. Merely when he is followed by the Miller, who represents a lower class, it sets the stage for the Tales to reverberate both a respect for and a disregard for upper form rules. Helen Cooper, too as Mikhail Bakhtin and Derek Brewer, call this opposition "the ordered and the grotesque, Lent and Carnival, officially canonical culture and its riotous, and high-spirited underside."[57] Several works of the time independent the aforementioned opposition.[57]

Relativism versus realism

Chaucer's characters each express different—sometimes vastly different—views of reality, creating an temper of testing, empathy, and relativism.[32] Equally Helen Cooper says, "Different genres give different readings of the earth: the fabliau scarcely notices the operations of God, the saint'south life focuses on those at the expense of physical reality, tracts and sermons insist on prudential or orthodox morality, romances privilege man emotion." The sheer number of varying persons and stories renders the Tales as a fix unable to arrive at any definite truth or reality.[58]

Liminality

The concept of liminality figures prominently inside The Canterbury Tales.[32] A liminal space, which tin can be both geographical also as metaphorical or spiritual, is the transitional or transformational infinite betwixt a "real" (secure, known, express) world and an unknown or imaginary space of both gamble and possibility.[59] The notion of a pilgrimage is itself a liminal feel, considering information technology centres on travel between destinations and because pilgrims undertake it hoping to get more holy in the process. Thus, the structure of The Canterbury Tales itself is liminal; it non just covers the distance betwixt London and Canterbury, but the bulk of the tales refer to places entirely outside the geography of the pilgrimage. Jean Jost summarises the part of liminality in The Canterbury Tales,

Both appropriately and ironically in this raucous and subversive liminal space, a ragtag associates gather together and tell their equally unconventional tales. In this unruly place, the rules of tale telling are established, themselves to be both matted and broken; hither the tales of game and earnest, solas and sentence, will be set up and interrupted. Here the sacred and profane adventure begins, merely does not end. Here, the condition of peril is as prominent as that of protection. The human action of pilgrimaging itself consists of moving from i urban space, through liminal rural infinite, to the next urban space with an ever fluctuating series of events and narratives punctuating those spaces. The goal of pilgrimage may well exist a religious or spiritual infinite at its conclusion, and reflect a psychological progression of the spirit, in still some other kind of emotional space.[60]

Liminality is also evident in the individual tales. An obvious example of this is The Friar'southward Tale in which the yeoman devil is a liminal figure considering of his transitory nature and part; it is his purpose to issue souls from their current being to hell, an entirely unlike one.[61] The Franklin's Tale is a Breton Lai tale, which takes the tale into a liminal space by invoking not but the interaction of the supernatural and the mortal, just also the relation betwixt the present and the imagined past.[62]

Reception

While Chaucer clearly states the addressees of many of his poems (the Volume of the Duchess is believed to have been written for John of Gaunt on the occasion of his married woman's decease in 1368), the intended audience of The Canterbury Tales is more than hard to decide. Chaucer was a courtier, leading some to believe that he was mainly a court poet who wrote exclusively for the nobility. He is referred to as a noble translator and poet past Eustache Deschamps and past his contemporary John Gower. It has been suggested that the poem was intended to be read aloud, which is likely every bit this was a common activeness at the fourth dimension. Even so, information technology too seems to have been intended for private reading, since Chaucer frequently refers to himself as the author, rather than the speaker, of the work. Determining the intended audience directly from the text is even more hard, since the audience is role of the story. This makes it hard to tell when Chaucer is writing to the fictional pilgrim audience or the actual reader.[63]

Chaucer's works may accept been distributed in some form during his lifetime in office or in whole. Scholars speculate that manuscripts were circulated amidst his friends, simply likely remained unknown to most people until later his death. However, the speed with which copyists strove to write complete versions of his tale in manuscript form shows that Chaucer was a famous and respected poet in his ain day. The Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts are examples of the care taken to distribute the work. More manuscript copies of the poem exist than for whatsoever other verse form of its day except The Prick of Conscience, causing some scholars to give it the medieval equivalent of bestseller status. Fifty-fifty the most elegant of the illustrated manuscripts, however, is not near as highly decorated every bit the work of authors of more respectable works such as John Lydgate'southward religious and historical literature.[64]

15th century

John Lydgate and Thomas Occleve were among the first critics of Chaucer's Tales, praising the poet every bit the greatest English language poet of all time and the first to prove what the language was truly capable of poetically. This sentiment was universally agreed upon by later on critics into the mid-15th century. Glosses included in The Canterbury Tales manuscripts of the time praised him highly for his skill with "sentence" and rhetoric, the two pillars past which medieval critics judged poetry. The most respected of the tales was at this time the Knight's, as information technology was total of both.[65]

Literary additions and supplements

The incompleteness of the Tales led several medieval authors to write additions and supplements to the tales to make them more than complete. Some of the oldest existing manuscripts of the tales include new or modified tales, showing that even early on on, such additions were being created. These emendations included diverse expansions of the Cook's Tale, which Chaucer never finished, The Plowman'due south Tale, The Tale of Gamelyn, the Siege of Thebes, and the Tale of Beryn.[66]

The Tale of Beryn, written by an bearding author in the 15th century, is preceded by a lengthy prologue in which the pilgrims arrive at Canterbury and their activities at that place are described. While the rest of the pilgrims disperse throughout the boondocks, the Pardoner seeks the angel of Kate the barmaid, but faces issues dealing with the man in her life and the innkeeper Harry Bailey. As the pilgrims turn back dwelling, the Merchant restarts the storytelling with Tale of Beryn. In this tale, a beau named Beryn travels from Rome to Arab republic of egypt to seek his fortune but to be cheated by other businessmen there. He is then aided by a local man in getting his revenge. The tale comes from the French tale Bérinus and exists in a unmarried early manuscript of the tales, although it was printed along with the tales in a 1721 edition by John Urry.[67]

John Lydgate wrote The Siege of Thebes in about 1420. Like the Tale of Beryn, it is preceded by a prologue in which the pilgrims arrive in Canterbury. Lydgate places himself amongst the pilgrims as one of them and describes how he was a part of Chaucer'south trip and heard the stories. He characterises himself equally a monk and tells a long story about the history of Thebes before the events of the Knight's Tale. John Lydgate's tale was popular early on and exists in old manuscripts both on its ain and as part of the Tales. It was first printed as early as 1561 past John Stow, and several editions for centuries subsequently followed suit.[68]

There are actually ii versions of The Plowman's Tale, both of which are influenced by the story Piers Plowman, a work written during Chaucer's lifetime. Chaucer describes a Plowman in the Full general Prologue of his tales, but never gives him his own tale. One tale, written by Thomas Occleve, describes the miracle of the Virgin and the Sleeveless Garment. Another tale features a pelican and a griffin debating church building corruption, with the pelican taking a position of protest akin to John Wycliffe's ideas.[69]

The Tale of Gamelyn was included in an early on manuscript version of the tales, Harley 7334, which is notorious for beingness one of the lower-quality early on manuscripts in terms of editor error and alteration. It is now widely rejected by scholars as an authentic Chaucerian tale, although some scholars recollect he may have intended to rewrite the story as a tale for the Yeoman. Dates for its authorship vary from 1340 to 1370.[seventy]

Later adaptations and homages

Books

  • The almost well-known work of the 18th century writer Harriet Lee was called The Canterbury Tales, and consists of twelve stories, related by travellers thrown together by untoward blow. In turn, Lee's version had a profound influence on Lord Byron.
  • Henry Dudeney's 1907 book The Canterbury Puzzles contains a function reputedly lost from what modern readers know as Chaucer's tales.
  • Historical-mystery novelist P.C. Doherty wrote a series of novels based on The Canterbury Tales, making utilize of both the story frame and Chaucer'due south characters.
  • Scientific discipline-fiction writer Dan Simmons wrote his Hugo Honor winning 1989 novel Hyperion based on an extra-planetary grouping of pilgrims.
  • Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins used The Canterbury Tales as a construction for his 2004 non-fiction volume nigh evolution titled The Antecedent's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution. His fauna pilgrims are on their way to find the common ancestor, each telling a tale near evolution.
  • Canadian author Angie Abdou translates The Canterbury Tales to a cross section of people, all snow-sports enthusiasts merely from different social backgrounds, converging on a remote back-state ski cabin in British Columbia in the 2011 novel The Canterbury Trail.

Stage adaptations

  • The 2 Noble Kinsmen, by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, a retelling of "The Knight's Tale", was first performed in 1613 or 1614 and published in 1634.
  • In 1961, Erik Chisholm completed his opera, The Canterbury Tales. The opera is in iii acts: The Wyf of Bath's Tale, The Pardoner's Tale and The Nun's Priest's Tale.
  • Nevill Coghill's modern English version formed the basis of a musical version that was start staged in 1964.

Movie and television receiver

  • A Canterbury Tale, a 1944 movie, jointly written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is loosely based on the narrative frame of Chaucer'due south tales. The movie opens with a group of medieval pilgrims journeying through the Kentish countryside as a narrator speaks the opening lines of the Full general Prologue. The scene then makes a now-famous transition to the fourth dimension of World War Two. From that betoken on, the moving picture follows a grouping of strangers, each with their ain story and in need of some kind of redemption, who are making their fashion to Canterbury together. The film's main story takes place in an imaginary town in Kent and ends with the main characters arriving at Canterbury Cathedral, bells pealing and Chaucer's words again resounding. A Canterbury Tale is recognised equally ane of the Powell-Pressburger team'south virtually poetic and artful films. Information technology was produced equally wartime propaganda, using Chaucer'south verse, referring to the famous pilgrimage, and offering photography of Kent to remind the public of what made Britain worth fighting for. In one scene, a local historian lectures an audience of British soldiers about the pilgrims of Chaucer's time and the vibrant history of England.[71]
  • Pier Paolo Pasolini'south 1972 moving picture The Canterbury Tales features several of the tales, some of which cohere to the original tale and others which are embellished. "The Melt's Tale", for instance, which is incomplete in the original version, is expanded into a full story, and "The Friar'southward Tale" extends the scene in which the Summoner is dragged down to hell. The motion picture includes these two tales also as "The Miller's Tale", "The Summoner's Tale", "The Wife of Bath's Tale", and "The Merchant'due south Tale".[72] "The Tale of Sir Topas" was also filmed and dubbed; however, information technology was later removed past Pasolini, and is at present considered lost.
  • Alan Plater retold the stories in a series of plays for BBC2 in 1975: Trinity Tales.
  • On 26 April 1986, American radio personality Garrison Keillor opened "The News from Lake Wobegon" portion of the first alive TV broadcast of his A Prairie Dwelling house Companion radio show with a reading of the original Middle English language text of the Full general Prologue. He commented, "Although those words were written more 600 years ago, they still draw spring."
  • The 2001 film A Knight's Tale, starring Heath Ledger, takes its title from Chaucer'due south "The Knight's Tale" and features Chaucer as a character.
  • In 2003, the BBC once again featured modern re-tellings of selected tales in their half-dozen-episode serial Canterbury Tales.[73]

Music

  • British Psychedelic rock band Procol Harum's 1967 hitting "A Whiter Shade of Pale" is often assumed to be referencing the Canterbury Tales through the line, "every bit the miller told his tale." Notwithstanding, lyricist Keith Reid has denied this, maxim he had never read Chaucer when he wrote the line.[74]
  • The title of Sting's 1993 anthology Ten Summoner's Tales alludes to "The Summoner's Tale" and to Sting's birth proper name, Gordon Sumner.[75]

Ezra Wintertime, Canterbury Tales mural (1939), Library of Congress John Adams Edifice, Washington, D.C. This mural is located on the w wall of the North Reading Room, and features the Miller, Host, Knight, Squire, Yeoman, Md, Chaucer, Man of Police, Clerk, Manciple, Crewman, Prioress, Nun, and three Priests; the other pilgrims appear on the e wall mural.[76]

  • The Knight

  • The Squire

  • Oswald The Reeve

  • Robin The Miller

  • Roger The Cook

  • Alison The Wife of Bath

  • The Franklin

  • The Shipman

  • The Manciple

  • The Merchant

  • The Clerk of Oxford

  • The Sergeant of Law

  • The Doc

  • The Parson

  • The Monk

  • Madame Eglantine The Prioress

  • The 2d Nun

  • The Nun'southward Priest

  • Hubert The Friar

  • The Summoner

  • The Pardoner

  • The Catechism Yeoman

  • Geoffrey Chaucer

See likewise

  • Book collection.jpg Novels portal

Notes

  1. ^ Carlson, David. "The Chronology of Lydgate'southward Chaucer References". The Chaucer Review, Vol. 38, No. three (2004), pp. 246–54. Accessed 6 January 2014.
  2. ^ The name "Tales of Caunterbury" appears within the surviving texts of Chaucer'southward work. Its modern name starting time appeared as Canterbury talys in John Lydgate's 1421–1422 prologue to the Siege of Thebes.[1]
  3. ^ "Encyclopedia Britannica".
  4. ^ "A Digital Catalogue of the Pre-1500 Manuscripts and Incunables of the Canterbury Tales 2nd Edition".
  5. ^ Pearsall, 8.
  6. ^ Cooper, 6–7
  7. ^ Pearsall, 10, 17.
  8. ^ Cooper, eight.
  9. ^ Linne R. Mooney (2006), "Chaucer'south Scribe," Speculum, 81 : 97–138.
  10. ^ [i] Ezard, John (20 July 2004). "The scrivener's tale: how Chaucer's sloppy copyist was unmasked afterward 600 years". The Guardian.
  11. ^ See Lawrence Warner, Chaucer'south Scribes: London Textual Production, 1384–1432 (Cambridge: Cambridge Academy Printing, 2018).
  12. ^ a b c Cooper, vii
  13. ^ Pearsall, fourteen–15.
  14. ^ Text from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. by Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Printing, 1987), p. 153.
  15. ^ Based on the information in Norman Davies, "Language and Versification", in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. past Larry D. Benson, tertiary edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. xxv–xli.
  16. ^ due east.yard. Ian Robinson, Chaucer's Prosody: A Study of the Middle English Verse Tradition (London: Cambridge University Press, 1971).
  17. ^ See M. L. Samuels, "Chaucerian Final '-east'", Notes and Queries, 19 (1972), 445–48, and D. Burnley, "Inflection in Chaucer'southward Adjectives", Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 83 (1982), 169–77.
  18. ^ Cooper, p. 10.
  19. ^ Bloom, Harold (xi November 2009). "Route Trip". The New York Times . Retrieved 9 September 2013.
  20. ^ Sobecki, Sebastian (2017). "A Southwark Tale: Gower, the 1381 Poll Tax, and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales" (PDF). Speculum. 92 (iii): 630–lx. doi:10.1086/692620. S2CID 159994357.
  21. ^ Cooper, pp. ten–11.
  22. ^ Cooper, pp. 12–sixteen.
  23. ^ Brewer, p. 227. "Although Chaucer undoubtedly studied the works of these celebrated writers, and peculiarly of Dante before this fortunate interview; yet it seems likely, that these excursions gave him a new relish for their compositions, and enlarged his knowledge of the Italian fables.
  24. ^ Brewer, p. 277."...where he became thoroughly inbued with the spirit and excellence of the great Italian poets and prose-writers: Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio; and is said to take had a personal contact interview with i of these, Petrarch."
  25. ^ Hendrickson, pp. 183–92. Professor M. L. Hendrickson of the University of Chicago gives a detailed assay as to Chaucer coming in contact with Petrarch.
  26. ^ Rearden, p. 458. "In that location can exist no moral incertitude but that Chaucer knew Petrarch personally. They were both in France many times, where they might take met. They were both courtiers. They both had an enthusiasm for scholarship. Whether they met then, or whether Chaucer, when on his visit to Genoa, specially visited the Italian, it does not announced." "...but the only reason that such a visit could non have occurred lies in the fact that Petrarch himself does non record it. Withal, on the other hand, would he take mentioned the visit of a homo who was the retainer of a barbarous monarch, and whose only claim to find, literary-wise, was his cultivation of an unknown and uncouth dialect that was half bounder French?"
  27. ^ Skeat (1874), p. xxx. "And we know that Petrarch, on his own shewing, was so pleased with the story of Griselda that he learnt information technology by heart as well as he could, for the express purpose of repeating information technology to friends, before the thought of turning information technology into Latin occurred to him. Whence we may conclude that Chaucer and Petrarch met at Padua early on in 1373; that Petrarch told Chaucer the story by give-and-take of mouth, either in Italian or French; and that Chaucer soon after obtained a copy of Petrarch'south Latin version, which he kept constantly before him whilst making his own translation."
  28. ^ "Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales", 2002, p. 22.
  29. ^ Cooper, 8–9.
  30. ^ Cooper, 17–18.
  31. ^ Cooper, 18.
  32. ^ a b c Podgorski, Daniel (29 December 2015). "Puppetry and the "Popet:" Fiction, Reality, and Empathy in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales". The Gemsbok . Retrieved 17 March 2016.
  33. ^ Cooper, 22–24.
  34. ^ Cooper, 24–25.
  35. ^ Cooper, 25–26.
  36. ^ Prestwich, Michael (2014). Medieval People: Bright Lives in a Distant Landscape. London: Thames & Hudson. pp. 4. An Age of Plague 1300–1400. ISBN978-0500252031.
  37. ^ Cooper, 5–6.
  38. ^ Donald R. Howard, Chaucer and the Medieval Earth (London, 1987), pp. 410–17.
  39. ^ Bisson, pp. 49–51, 56–62.
  40. ^ Bisson, p. 50.
  41. ^ Bisson, pp. 61–64.
  42. ^ Bisson, pp. 66–67.
  43. ^ Bisson, pp. 67–68.
  44. ^ Bisson, pp. 73–75, 81.
  45. ^ Bisson, pp. 91–95.
  46. ^ Rubin, 106–07.
  47. ^ "The Prioress's Tale", by Prof. Jane Zatta.
  48. ^ Bisson, pp. 99–02.
  49. ^ Bisson, pp. 110–13.
  50. ^ Bisson, pp. 117–19.
  51. ^ Bisson, pp. 123–31.
  52. ^ Bisson, pp. 132–34.
  53. ^ Bisson, pp. 139–42.
  54. ^ Bisson, p. 138.
  55. ^ Bisson, pp. 141–42.
  56. ^ Bisson, p. 143.
  57. ^ a b Cooper, nineteen
  58. ^ Cooper, 21.
  59. ^ Bishop, Norma J. "Liminal Infinite in Travellers' Tales: Historical and Fictional Passages (Sociology, Ritual, History)". Guild No. 8615152 The Pennsylvania State University, 1986. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Spider web. 30 Sep. 2015.
  60. ^ Jost, Jean. "Urban and Liminal Space in Chaucer's Knight's Tale: Perilous or Protective?" Albrecht Classen, ed. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture: Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Mod Age. Berlin, DEU: Walter de Gruyter, 2009. Print.
  61. ^ Bloomfield, Morton W. "The 'Friar'southward Tale' as a Liminal Tale". The Chaucer Review 17.4 (1983): 286–91. Impress.
  62. ^ Nowlin, Steele. "Between Precedent and Possibility: Liminality, Historicity, and Narrative in Chaucer's 'The Franklin's Tale'". Studies in Philology 103.1 (2006): 47–67. Impress.
  63. ^ Pearsall, 294–95.
  64. ^ Pearsall, 295–97.
  65. ^ Pearsall, 298–302.
  66. ^ Trigg, Stephanie, Congenial Souls: Reading Chaucer from Medieval to Postmodern, Minneapolis: Academy of Minnesota Press, 2002, p. 86. ISBN 0-8166-3823-3.
  67. ^ Trigg, pp. 86–88, 97.
  68. ^ Trigg, pp. 88–97.
  69. ^ Brewer, Charlotte, Editing Piers Plowman: The Development of the Text, Cambridge: Cambridge Academy Press, 1996, pp. viii–9. ISBN 0-521-34250-3.
  70. ^ Ohlgren, Thomas, Medieval Outlaws, Parlor Press, 2005, pp. 264–65. ISBN 1-932559-62-0.
  71. ^ Ellis, Steve, Chaucer at Large, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000, pp. 64–65. ISBN 0-8166-3376-2.
  72. ^ Pencak, William, The Films of Derek Jarman, Jefferson: McFarland & Co, 2002, pp. 178–9. ISBN 0-7864-1430-8.
  73. ^ "Canterbury Tales". BBC Drama. Retrieved 6 May 2007.
  74. ^ Butler,Mike (17 September 1994). "In truth they were at sea: Lives of the Keen Songs - A Whiter Shade of Pale: Vestal Virgins, light fandangoes: Procol Harum'south classic can be inexplainable. Mike Butler asked its authors to help". Contained. Retrieved 24 May 2021.
  75. ^ Marienberg, Evyatar (2021). Sting and Faith: The Catholic-Shaped Imagination of a Rock Icon. Eugene, Or.: Pour Books. ISBN9781725272262 . Retrieved 10 July 2021.
  76. ^ "On These Walls: Inscriptions and Quotations in the Buildings of the Library of Congress". Library of Congress . Retrieved 31 Dec 2012.

References

  • Bisson, Lillian M. (1998). Chaucer and the belatedly medieval world. New York: St. Martin'southward Press. ISBN978-0-312-10667-6.
  • Cooper, Helen (1996). The Canterbury tales. Oxford guides to Chaucer (2 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-871155-1.
  • Pearsall, Derek Albert (1985). The Canterbury tales . Unwin critical library. London: G. Allen & Unwin. ISBN978-0-04-800021-seven.
  • Scattered amidst the nations: documents affecting Jewish history, 49 to 1975. Alexis P. Rubin (ed.). Toronto, ON: Wall & Emerson. 1993. ISBN978-1-895131-ten-9. {{cite volume}}: CS1 maint: others (link)

Further reading

  • Collette, Carolyn P. (2001). Species, phantasms, and images: vision and medieval psychology in The Canterbury tales. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. doi:10.3998/mpub.16499. ISBN978-0-472-11161-9.
  • Kolve, 5.A.; Olson, Glending (2005). The Canterbury tales: xv tales and the full general prologue: authoritative text, sources and backgrounds, criticism. A Norton critical edition (2 ed.). New York: Due west.W. Norton. ISBN978-0-393-92587-6.
  • Sobecki, Sebastian (2017). "A Southwark Tale: Gower, the 1381 Poll Tax, and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales" (PDF). Speculum. 92 (3): 630–sixty. doi:10.1086/692620. S2CID 159994357.
  • Thompson, N.Southward. (1996). Chaucer, Boccaccio, and the debate of love: a comparative study of the Decameron and the Canterbury tales. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN978-0-19-812378-1.
  • Spark Notes: The Canterbury Tales. New York: Spark Publishing. 2014.
  • No Fair: The Canterbury Tales. New York: Spark Publishing. 2009.
  • Dogan, Sandeur (2013). "The Three Estates Model: Represented and Satirised in Chaucer'due south Full general Prologue to The Canterbury Tales". Journal of History, Civilization & Art Enquiry / Tarih Kültür ve Sanat Arastirmalari Dergisi. June 2013, Vol. ii Issue 2, pp. 49–56.
  • Nicholls, Jonathan. "Review: Chaucer's Narrators by David Lawton," The Modern Linguistic communication Review,2017.
  • Pugh, Tison. "Gender, Vulgarity, and the Phantom Debates of Chaucer'south Merchant'due south Tale," Studies in Philology, Vol. 114 Issue 3, 473–96, 2017.

External links

General

  • Texts and translations at Harvard University
  • The Canterbury Tales Project: publishing transcripts, images, collations and analysis of all surviving 15th-century copies
  • The Canterbury Tales public domain audiobook at LibriVox

Online texts

  • The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems at Project Gutenberg
  • Ecker, Ronald L.; Cheat, Eugene Joseph (1993). The Canterbury Tales: A Complete Translation into Modern English. Palatka, FL: Hodge & Braddock. ISBN978-0-9636512-3-v.

Facsimiles

  • The Hengwrt Manuscript: the oldest manuscript re-create
  • MS 1084/ii Canterbury tales at OPenn
  • Ellesmere Chaucer
  • British Library, Harley MS 7334
  • British Library, Harley MS 1758
  • Caxton'due south Chaucer: scans of William Caxton's two editions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Canterbury_Tales