Geoffrey Chaucer

        Geofrey Chaucer, a man who found English as a dialect and left it as a language back in late 14th century. He is regarded as a pioneer in poetry and not just that humor and most importantly characterization. His Canterbury Tales has stood the test of time and even today, millions and millions of copies of this particular work sold worldwide. So it’s arguably the most famous texts emerge from the medieval period which is when it was produced and when Chaucer lived. When studying his work, it’s important to firstly have a very solid understanding of the context and what was happening at the time and to know a little bit about the man himself. It is also crucial to understand important contextual issues that affected medieval England at the time because these issues are reflected in the individual characters within his story. Chaucer was born in 1340s in London and his family was well-off. He served in the Hundred Years War as soldier and diplomat and he developed his own type of poetry written in the Middle English vernacular, meaning he wrote the way people spoke, neither in French nor Latin. Some of the issues that were happening during his time are the War with France, the Black Death, castles, the feudal system and the Magna Carta to name some. Chaucer used Canterbury Tales as the results of his observations and indirectly passed the message through these characters.

        In the general prologue, the narrator who’s called Chaucer but does not directly represent Geoffrey Chaucer, joins a group of 29 pilgrims at the Tabard Inn in Southwark. The group is planning to travel to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket, which is in Canterbury, Kent and the narrator decribes all the pilgrims briefly. Imagine a 55-mile long journey, very tedious and riding on a horse, which was the mode of transportation back in late 14th century, travelling with strangers with different social class and occupations andwhat a better way to pass the time than telling stories. This is what the Canterbury Tales is all about – story telling. Story telling leading to story telling. It is told in a very humourous way so it deals with life class, romance, gender and the church. This is a tale to represent Caucer and his understanding of the world from many aspects and his characters were meticulously selected. The order of the potraits in the Prologue is important because it gives clue as to the social class standing of the different occupations.  

        The Miller’s Tale can be read as one of Chaucer’s funniest ever- earthy folk or fabliaux. The story of young girls getting married to rich old men has been and still is the source of much of the bawdy humor throughout Western and Asian literatures. This tale deals with justice or like we call it ‘karma / what goes around, comes around’. The charm of this tale is that each male character gets what he deserves; John the carpenter who had married his young wife is crowned for his stupidity and pride and ended up being the laughing story of everyone, Nicholas the young scholar, is left with his ‘bottom’ severly burned  whereas Absalon is left with nasty smell in his mouth.

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