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Plot Summary: Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
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Plot Summary: Overview of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Opposite old London, at the southern end of
London Bridge, once stood the Tabard Inn of Southwark, a quarter made
famous not only by the Canterbury Tales, but also by the first playhouses
where Shakespeare had his training. This Southwark was the point of
departure of all travel to the south of England, especially of those
mediaeval pilgrimages to the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury. On a
spring evening, at the inspiring time of the year when "longen folk to goon
on pilgrimages," Chaucer alights at the Tabard Inn, and finds it occupied
by a various company of people bent on a pilgrimage. Chance alone had
brought them together; for it was the custom of pilgrims to wait at some
friendly inn until a sufficient company were gathered to make the journey
pleasant and safe from robbers that might be encountered on the way.
Chaucer joins this company, which includes all classes of English society,
from the Oxford scholar to the drunken miller, and accepts gladly their
invitation to go with them on the morrow.
At supper the jovial host of the Tabard Inn suggests that, to enliven the
journey, each of the company shall tell four tales, two going and two
coming, on whatever subject shall suit him best. The host will travel with
them as master of ceremonies, and whoever tells the best story shall be
given a fine supper at the general expense when they all come back
again,--a shrewd bit of business and a fine idea, as the pilgrims all
agree.
When they draw lots for the first story the chance falls to the Knight, who
tells one of the best of the Canterbury Tales, the chivalric story of
"Palamon and Arcite." Then the tales follow rapidly, each with its prologue
and epilogue, telling how the story came about, and its effects on the
merry company. Interruptions are numerous; the narrative is full of life
and movement, as when the miller gets drunk and insists on telling his tale
out of season, or when they stop at a friendly inn for the night, or when
the poet with sly humor starts his story of "Sir Thopas," in dreary
imitation of the metrical romances of the day, and is roared at by the host
for his "drasty ryming." With Chaucer we laugh at his own expense, and are
ready for the next tale.
From the number of persons in the company, thirty-two in all, it is evident
that Chaucer meditated an immense work of one hundred and twenty-eight
tales, which should cover the whole life of England. Only twenty-four were
written; some of these are incomplete, and others are taken from his
earlier work to fill out the general plan of the Canterbury Tales.
Incomplete as they are, they cover a wide range, including stories of love
and chivalry, of saints and legends, travels, adventures, animal fables,
allegory, satires, and the coarse humor of the common people. Though all
but two are written in verse and abound in exquisite poetical touches, they
are stories as well as poems, and Chaucer is to be regarded as our first
short-story teller as well as our first modern poet. The work ends with a
kindly farewell from the poet to his reader, and so "here taketh the makere
of this book his leve."
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