Telling Tales

Abstract

A number of collections of tales have come down to us from the Middle Ages. Best known are Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. What made Chaucer’s work so innovative is that he brought together a cross section of English society as it had recently developed especially in a big city like London. In the English Parliament of Chaucer’s day, members of the nobility met with rich citizens of London and representatives of the shires, and this is reflected in the composition of the group of pilgrims. But as the son of a successful London wine merchant, Chaucer was also well acquainted with the class of the craftsmen, and a number of these he added to his travelling company. To shorten the way to Canterbury the pilgrims tell each other stories, and the mixed character of the group results in a wide variety of story genres and comments by the pilgrims, showing not just their social differences, but also their widely different characters as human beings.