Canterbury and its Cathedral

The murder of Becket (1170)

The shrine of Becket in Canterbury

St. Thomas Becket

shown in a stained-glass window

in Canterbury Cathedral

A masterpiece of English Literature

The Father of English Poetry

G. Chaucer (1343 – 1400)

The Pilgrims on their way to

Canterbury Cathedral

The Canterbury Tales, a collection of verse tales told by a group of pilgrim travelling to

Canterbury

Pilgrims and medieval society

• Ranking from Knight to Labourer of the fields they are a portrait of middle-class England in the late 14th Century.

• Artisans, such as smiths, shoemakers, carpenters and butchers organized in guilds, laid the foundations of an urban bourgeoisie.

Pilgrimage as framework to the theme of life in medieval England

• Realistic descriptions carried out with fine irony

The stories are told in the kind of English which

later became MODERN

STANDARD ENGLISH

The Canterbury Tales : Prologue

•Here bygynneth the Book of the tales of Caunterbury

• Here begins the Bookof the Tales of Canterbury

And going on…

• Whan that aprill with his shoures sooteThe droghte of march hath perced to the roote,And bathed every veyne in swich licourOf which vertu engendred is the flour;Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

The modern version

• When April with his showers sweet with fruitThe drought of March has pierced unto the rootAnd bathed each vein with liquor that has powerTo generate therein and sire the flower;When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath,

Boccaccio – Dante Chaucer

• The device of the collection of tales and the idea of the frame where to insert them is very likely taken from Boccaccio

• The central idea of the pilgrimage might have come from Dante’s otherwordly pilgrimages

To Canterbury

• 30 pilgrims telling two verse tales each, on their way to and on their way back from Canterbury

• To the shrine of Thomas Becket,made martyr and saint by the Roman Church

The pilgrims enjoyng a meal at the Tabard Inn

There came at nightfall to that hostelrySome nine and twenty in a companyOf sundry persons who had chanced to fallIn fellowship, and pilgrims were they allThat toward Canterbury town would ride.

Chaucer’s function in the story

• But none the less, whilst I have time and space,Before yet farther in this tale I pace,It seems to me accordant with reasonTo inform you of the state of every oneOf all of these, as it appeared to me,And who they were, and what was their degree,And even how arrayed there at the inn;And with a knight thus will I first begin.

• A knight there was, and he a worthy man,Who, from the moment that he first beganTo ride about the world, loved chivalry,Truth, honour, freedom and all courtesy.

There was a housewife come

from Bath, or near,Who- sad to say- was

deaf in either ear.At making cloth she had so great a bent

With us there was a doctor of physic;

In all this world was none like him to pick For talk of medicine and

surgery;

There was a merchant with forked beard, and girtIn motley gown, and high on horse he sat,