English Literature I-Old and Middle English Periods - 副本.pptVIP

Structure Canterbury Tales falls into the same category as many other works of its day as a collection of stories organized into a frame narrative or frame tale. Chaucers Tales differed from other stories in this genre chiefly in its intense variation. Most story collections focused on a theme, usually a religious one. The idea of a pilgrimage appears to have been a useful device to get such a diverse collection of people together for literary purposes, and was also unprecedented. Introducing a competition among the tales encourages the reader to compare the tales in all their variety, and allows Chaucer to showcase the breadth of his skill in different genres and literary forms. While the structure of the Tales is largely linear, with one story following another, it is also much more than that. In the General Prologue, Chaucer describes, not the tales to be told, but the people who will tell them, making it clear that structure will depend on the characters rather than a general theme or moral. General themes and points of view arise as tales are told which are responded to by other characters in their own tales. These people act their parts in a way that reveals their private lives and habits, their moods and dispositions, their good and bad qualities. Character is revealed in their portraits, their tales, and their behaviors and remarks along the way. The pilgrims are further characterized through their tales, the teller-tale relationship, and through the head links and end links. As a group, the tales are woven into the framework of the pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas, at Canterbury, with Chaucer the pilgrim reporting the tales he heard from his various fellow pilgrims. Lastly, Chaucer does not pay much attention to the progress of the trip, to the time passing as the pilgrims travel, or specific locations along the way to Canterbury. His writing of the story seems focused primarily on the stories being told, and not on the pilgrimage itself. V.