Geoffrey Chaucer

A retelling of the medieval poem about a group of travelers on a pilgrimage to Canterbury and the tales they tell each other. With their astonishing diversity of tone and subject matter, The Canterbury Tales have become one of the touchstones of medieval literature. Translated here into modern English, these tales of a motley crowd of pilgrims drawn from all walks of life-from knight to nun, miller to monk-reveal a picture of English life in the fourteenth...

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London sometime in the 1340s. The son of a vintner, it is believed that Chaucer came from a fairly well to do family, which enabled him as a young man to come into the service of the Countess of Ulster as the noblewoman's page, a common form of apprenticeship in medieval times. Eventually, it is believed, Chaucer would study law and this most likely afforded him the opportunity to become a member of the royal court of...

At the Tabard Inn in Southwark, in the London of the late 1300s, a band of men and women from all walks of life have gathered to begin a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury. To relieve the tedium of the journey, the host of the inn proposes that each of the pilgrims tell a favorite story, promising that the best storyteller will be treated to a fi ne dinner on the group's return to Southwark. So begins one of the earliest masterpieces...