The+Canturbury+Tales.docVIP

_________________________________________________________________________________ 　　The Canterbury Tales?is Chaucers masterpiece and it is for it that Chaucers name is best remembered.?The Canterbury Tales?opens with a general prologue, which is considered the best part of the whole work. In the prologue, the readers are told that on a spring evening, the poet drops in the Tabard Inn, where he meets 29 other pilgrims all ready for a journey of 60 miles to Canterbury . Because of the long and tedious journey, the host of the Inn suggests that they should colour the journey by telling stories. He proposes that each pilgrim should tell two tales on the way to Canterbury and two others on the way back. The inn-keeper is going to be their judge. And the best story-teller should be treated with a fine meal at the cost of all the rest. The pilgrims are 30 in all including the poet. Therefore according to the plan, there should have been 120 stories altogether. But only 24 tales were written due to the authors death in 1400. 　　However, incomplete as these stories are, they cover practically the whole major literary genres in medieval Europe : chivalric romance, folk tales, legends, legendary epic sagas, beast fables, mythology, moral allegories, sermons, and others. 　　The Canterbury Tales?gives a comprehensive picture of Chaucers time. Especially the Prologue, it is a splendid masterpiece of realistic portrayal. It supplies an artistic corridor of people from all walks of life in the medieval England . All kinds of people except the highest (the King and the top nobility) and the lowest (the very poor labouring people) are represented by these thirty pilgrims. The gentle class is represented by the knight, the squire, the monk, the prioress, the Oxford scholar and the Franklin; the burgher class is represented by the wealthy tradesman, the haberdasher, the carpenter, the landed proprietor, the weaver, the tapestry-maker, and the Wife of Bath; and the professionals