And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende
The hooly blisful martir for to seeke blessed seek
That hem hath holpen when that they were seeke. helped sickThe innkeeper proposes a tale-telling game to pass the time on the two-day ride to
the shrine of St Thomas Becket of Canterbury, killed by agents of Henry II in 1170
at the altar of his Cathedral. The thirty pilgrims are each to tell two tales on the way
and two on the way back; the teller of the tale of best sentence [moral import] and
most solaas [comfort, pleasure] wins a supper at the Tabard paid for by the others.
The game creates the Tales; pilgrim tales were proverbially known as ‘Canterbury
tales’. The pilgrims tell twenty-four tales of popular kinds: saints’ lives, moral fables,
rude jokes, beast fables, sermons, penitential treatises. Most often read today are the
General Prologue and the tales of the Knight, the Miller, the Wife of Bath, the Merchant,
the Franklin, the Pardoner and the Nun’s Priest; less often, those of the Cook, the Reeve,
the Man of Law, the Friar, the Summoner, the Clerk, the Shipman, the Prioress and ‘Sir
Thopas’. The moral tales are neglected; we prefer the clowns. The pilgrims do not
behave well: they banter and tease, interrupt and quarrel; the Knight stops the Host
attacking the Pardoner. Some do not tell tales; Chaucer tells two, since the Host halts his
first. The Knight prevents the Monk from finishing the thirteenth of his tragedies.
The Tales are found in around eighty manuscripts, in separate sections or
Fragments. The best manuscripts have ten Fragments, each with one or more tales. If
some Fragments are incomplete, the Tales have a conclusion.As the shadows lengthen,
with Canterbury in sight, the Host jocularly asks the Parson to speak last and ‘knytte
up wel a greet mateere’. He responds with ‘a myrie tale in prose .... To shewe yow the
wey,in this viage,/ Ofthilke parfit glorious pilgrymage / That highte Jerusalem
ce lestial’. His Tale is a confessor’s manual based on the Seven Deadly Sins: a fitting end
to a pilgrimage, and a comprehensive answer to its parliament of fools.
The First Fragment has the General Prologue, and the Tales ofthe Knight, the
Miller, the Reeve and the Cook. It is a polished introduction to and sample of the
narrative of the Tales as a whole. Between the Spring opening and the Host’s takeover
ofthe pilgrimage, the roll ofpilgrims in its colour, chat and variety is a miniature of
English society. Chaucer joins his ‘sondry folk’: ‘And shortly, whan the sonne was to
reste, / So hadde I spoken with hem everichon / That I was of hir felaweshipe
anon’. The diplomat wins the confidence of his puppets.
The pilgrims are types familiar from medieval social satire, but Chaucer makes
them speak to him and through him to us: their voices animate their sparkling two-
dimensional portraits. Medieval satirists reproved obstinate vice, but the pilgrim
Chaucer praises his creatures, letting us see the imperfections to which they are
blind. He loves the Prioress’s ladylike table-manners and admires the fat Monk’s
beautiful boots. When the Monk disputes a text which says that a monk out of his
cloister isn’t worth an oyster, Chaucer agrees: ‘And I seyde his opinion was good’. The
bookish author enjoys the Monk’s scorn at the absurd idea that he should do the
work prescribed to monks:What sholde he studie and make hymselven wood, Why mad
Upon a book in cloystre alwey to poure, pore
Or swynken with his handes, and laboure, toil
As Austyn bit? How shal the world be served? Augustine bade
Lat Austyn have his swynk to him reserved! toil reserved to himself62 2 · MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE: 1066–1500