The Canterbury Tales – An Introduction English 12 – Miss Foster

And so it begins… ● The story starts at a bar outside of London (What’s with writers and drinking!? First the mead hall, now a bar…) ● The year is 1390 ● A group of pilgrims have gathered to go on a journey to see the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury (thus the name of the story – The Canterbury Tales)

Who’s telling this story anyway?!  Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the story, and he’s also the NARRATOR. Sometimes, authors like themselves so much that they not only write a story, but they make themselves a part of it. New vocab word…“pompous!”  After meeting the pilgrims in the bar, he finds them pretty fascinating and begins writing the story of their adventures

The premise of the story…  All of the pilgrims go to dinner together. The bar’s owner decides that their journey will be much more entertaining if they participate in a story contest – he challenges each person to tell two stories on the way to Canterbury, and two on the way back. The owner will then act as the judge of their stories and the person with the best tales wins dinner after they return.

To make it more interesting…  The bar’s owner says that if any of the pilgrims question his judgment as to whose story is the best, he’ll buy dinner for the whole group. All of the pilgrims, being hungry cheapskates (sounds like some seniors I know!) agree to abide by the games rules and get excited about a fun journey to Canterbury.

Twists and turns in the game…  Some ornery pilgrims begin to tell stories with characters VERY similar to their trip mates (similar to what you all would probably do…as evidenced by last week’s story starter!)  Some pilgrims tell funny stories, some tragic…some romantic, and some downright dirty! (Chaucer is not PG-13!)  All in all, 120 stories should have been told according to the rules of the game…however, only 24 were ever written about BECAUSE…

Sad news…  The author, Chaucer, died before he was able to finish writing The Canterbury Tales  The reader never gets to see the pilgrims reach their destination, AND never finds out who wins the competition…it ends up being up to us to choose from the stories that actually were completed.  And the best story goes to…