The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century (two of them in prose, the remaining twenty-two in verse). The tales are contained inside a frame tale and told by a collection of pilgrims on a pilgrimage from Southwark to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The Canterbury Tales are written in Middle English. The tales are considered to be his magnum opus, influenced by t...
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The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century (two of them in prose, the remaining twenty-two in verse). The tales are contained inside a frame tale and told by a collection of pilgrims on a pilgrimage from Southwark to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The Canterbury Tales are written in Middle English. The tales are considered to be his magnum opus, influenced by the structure of The Decameron, which Chaucer is said to have read on an earlier visit to Italy, but Chaucer peopled his tales with 'sondry folk' rather than Boccaccio's fleeing nobles.
The date of the conception and writing of The Canterbury Tales as a collection of stories has proved difficult to discover. It seems clear that the Tales were begun after some of Chaucer's other works, such as Legend of Good Women, which fails to mention them in a list of other works by the author. Also, it was probably written after his Troilus and Criseyde,...
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