Although this introduction, the General Prologue, mentions St Thomas, the 'hooly, blissful martyr', it makes few other allusions to the spiritual side of pilgrimage, though the narrator describes himself as setting out 'with ful devout corage' (I 21). Some stories are bawdy fabliaux, some saints' lives or serious treatises.Ĭhaucer introduces his pilgrimage by saying that people want to travel in spring on pilgrimages, especially to the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury - who has helped them when they were sick (I 18). Famously, too, in imitating the real-life fact that pilgrims amused themselves en route by songs, musical instruments and story-telling, Chaucer offers a variety of genres and levels of seriousness and elegance. The way he exploits this fact creates a text in which he not only represents the diversity of contemporary society but also has the opportunity to depict conflict and rivalry between different trades. He has many story-tellers of differing class and character, and diversity, in many different forms, is the keynote of his collection. But the most important aspect of real-life pilgrimage that Chaucer takes up for his great poem is the fact that a wide variety of people, of different classes and different places might be found together on a pilgrimage. Canterbury Cathedral, Trinity Chapel Ambulatory nII-57.Ĭhaucer was not the only medieval writer to use a pilgrimage as a frame story to introduce a collection of tales: the Italian Giovanni Sercambi (1347-1426) composed his Novelliere, a series of tales purporting to have been told to a group who escape the plague which raged in Lucca in 1374, by travelling to various towns and cities in Italy. Despite this, the poem was soon regarded asa masterpiece, and later medieval writers made attempts to continue the Tales with descriptions of the pilgrims' behaviour in Canterbury. Chaucer's poem thus takes the form of a series of these individual tales connected within a framing device of the pilgrimage and interludes descibing the pilgrims' behaviour. Chaucer never finished the Canterbury Tales, and the pilgrims only make it to the outskirts of Canterbury in the poem as it survives. To pass the time and entertain each other on their way the pilgrims take it in turns to tell stories, many of a humorous or bawdy nature. Geoffey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, written between 13, is a long poem concerning a group of thirty pilgrims on their way from Southwark, in south London, to the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury. It should improve after you have gone through the next lesson.One of the most famous works of medieval literature is based around a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral. Your performance will not be perfect (none of the readers you have heard achieves perfection). Then try it yourself read aloud the first 18 lines of the General Prologue. For this reason, in the next set of exercises there are a number of different voices reading the words and lines. No two speakers of Middle English sounded just alike, and no two modern readers will sound exactly the same. You will find slight differences in each version that is to be expected. Then choose another reader and listen carefully. This includes a number of different voices reading the opening lines of the General Prologue, including a female voice, that of Jane Zatta of Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. There is a very useful collection of passages read aloud on Alan Baragona's page "The Criyng and the Soun: The Chaucer Metapage Audio Files," compiled for the Chaucer Metapage. When you are sure you understand the first eighteen lines of the General Prologue, listen to them read aloud. Read carefully through the first eighteen lines of The General Prologue, going slowly and making full use of the interlinear translation. Everyone knows the famous opening lines of The Canterbury Tales.
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