Insularity and communion

Abstract

The great comic classic of middle-English literature is the Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer, written in the last part of the fourteenth century. A party of men and women set out together on horse-back from an inn in London to make the pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket. By a happy coincidence their route will bring them past the very spot where we are gathered today. They are a mixed group: some of them are presented to us as virtuous characters, like the Clerk of Oxford and the Poor Parson; some are figures offun, like the drunken Miller; some are despicable hypocrites, like the Friar and the Summoner; and some are just ordinary lovable sinners, like the Wife of Bath. They agree to the suggestion of the Innkeeper that they should entertain each other on the way with stories, and that he should act as a chairman. In between the stories there are some interesting conversations; and it is with one of these, the Prologue to the Tale of the Wife of Bath, that I should like to begin.