THE PARDONER’S TALE

GEOFFREY CHAUCER

English poet (1342-circa 1400)

Known as the Father o English Literature

Author, philosopher, alchemist, and astronomer

Paul Bettany as Geoffrey Chaucer in A Knight’s Tale, a movie that is a modern interpretation of one of The Canterbury Tales

LITERARY WORKS

◦The book of the Duchess

(elegy)

◦The House of Fame

◦The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury TalesA work of fiction A collection of stories told by a group of pilgrims travelling to Carnterbury.

The Canterbury Tales

These tales contributed to shaping English Literature and establishing clear standards regarding the use of written English.

◦The relevance of this work consists on being wirtten in English, rather tan in Latin or French.

◦This makes it the first collection of tales written in vernacular English

◦Chaucer used his broad knowledge of people and places to create the variety of realistic characters in his work.

◦The plot structure of the Cantebury Tales is known as a “frame story”.

◦The frame is the group of pilgrims.

◦Each one tells a story, which can be comic or philosophic.

◦The pardoner’s Tale is a story with a moral, meant to guide people away from sin.