The Literature Book

69

See also: One Thousand and One Nights 44–45 ■ The Decameron 102 ■ Wuthering Heights 132–37 ■

The Hound of the Baskervilles 208 ■ If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler 298–99 ■ The Blind Assassin 326–27

the narrative to include a range

of personalities, whose stories

encompassed diverse themes.

Later works of the genre

include Emily Brontë’s Wuthering

Heights and Arthur Conan Doyle’s

Sherlock Holmes detective stories.

The technique is still in use and

many works of Modernist and

postmodernist fiction play with

framing narratives, for example

Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s

Night a Traveler. The device is also

often used in plays and movies.

Literary innovation

Chaucer probably began writing

The Canterbury Tales in about

1387, during a brief absence from

his official court duties and career

as a civil servant. It marked a

significant change in his literary

direction: his other poems—

including his first major work (an

elegy in the form of a dream vision)

and Troilus and Criseyde, his

retelling of the love story set during

the siege of Troy—were mainly

concerned with courtly themes and

written primarily to he heard by

court audiences. The Canterbury

Tales, however, was written for

a far wider audience, who were

probably intended to read the

work rather than just listen to it.

The text is written in Middle

English, as opposed to the Latin or

French that was commonly used for

courtly poetry of the time. Chaucer

was not the first to do this, but it

has been argued that he played a

major role in popularizing the use of

the vernacular in English literature.

Significantly, too, The Canterbury

Tales paints a remarkable picture

of late medieval English society,

depicting men and women of all

classes, from the nobility through

to the laboring classes.

Sondry folk

The Canterbury Tales opens with

a General Prologue that sets the

scene and creates a framework for

the tales that follow. The frame

story concerns a group of 29

pilgrims on their way to the shrine

of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury

Cathedral, in southern England. The

pilgrims meet at the Tabard Inn, in

Southwark, near London, where the

narrator, Geoffrey Chaucer, joins ❯❯

RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT

Aristocrats or nobles

• The Knight


• The Prioress


• The Monk


• The Friar

Those with commercial

wealth

• The Merchant


• The Man of Law


• The Clerk


• The Franklin (landowner)

Guildsmen

• The Haberdasher


• The Dyer


• The Carpenter


• The Weaver


• The Tapestry Maker

The lower class

• The Manciple


• The Miller


• The Reeve


• The Summoner


• The Pardoner

The middle class

• The Cook


• The Shipman


• The Physician


• The Wife of Bath

The virtuous poor

• The Parson


• The Plowman

At nyght was come

into that hostelrye

Wel nyne and twenty

in a compaignye

Of sondry folk...

The Canterbury Tales

Chaucer’s characters:

class and occupation

Early editions of The Canterbury

Tales contained woodcuts to help

make the text more accessible to a

wide range of readers. Shown here

are the pilgrims sharing a meal.

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