100 Fun Facts About The Canterbury Tales

In what language are The Canterbury Tales written?

Middle English was his choice although he read Latin, French and Italian; writing in the everyday London speech of his time let him catch his pilgrims' accents and dialects.

How many tales does The Canterbury Tales contain?

24 tales are all the collection holds: some pilgrims never get a turn and the party never starts for home, so most scholars think Chaucer died with it unfinished.

Whose shrine at Canterbury Cathedral are the pilgrims travelling to visit?

Saint Thomas Becket was the archbishop murdered in his own cathedral in 1170; the Prologue says pilgrims seek the martyr because he helped them when they were sick.

Chaucer began The Canterbury Tales under which king?

Richard II was king, and the great rising of his reign reaches the Nun's Priest's Tale, where a farmyard chase out-shouts Jack Straw's rebels.

At which Southwark inn do the Canterbury pilgrims gather at the start of the journey?

The Tabard was a real inn on Borough High Street: it burned in Southwark's great fire of 1676, and its rebuilt successor, long known as the Talbot, was pulled down in the 1870s.

In The Canterbury Tales, what is the name of the Host, the innkeeper who judges the storytelling contest?

Harry Bailey gets his name when the Cook addresses him, and a real Southwark innkeeper of that name sat in Parliament in Chaucer's day.

By the Host's plan, how many tales should each Canterbury pilgrim tell?

Four: two going and two returning would have made about 120 stories, but Chaucer came nowhere near that and his pilgrims never even start the journey home.

How do the Canterbury pilgrims decide who will tell the first tale?

They draw straws and the shortest falls to the Knight; when he finishes, the drunken Miller barges in ahead of the Monk, whom the Host had asked to go next.

According to the famous opening lines of The Canterbury Tales, in which month does the pilgrimage begin?

April's sweet showers, the opening lines say, pierce the drought of March to the root, and that is when folk long to go on pilgrimages.

What prize does the Host promise the Canterbury pilgrim who tells the best tale?

A free supper, paid for by all the other pilgrims, waits at the inn on their return, and the Host, who will serve it, appoints himself the judge.

Which Italian work shares plots with several of The Canterbury Tales?

Boccaccio's Decameron has its storytellers trade tales while sheltering from the plague; several of its plots recur in Chaucer, yet some scholars doubt he ever had a copy to hand.

Which two early manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales, one now kept in Wales, were copied by the same scribe?

Hengwrt and Ellesmere share a scribe, named in 2004 as Adam Pinkhurst, the 'Adam' Chaucer chides in a poem for careless copying, though later scholars dispute it.

Which library got the best-known illustrated Canterbury Tales manuscript when a railroad magnate bought it in 1917?

The Huntington Library, California got it when Henry Huntington bought an English family's whole library; most modern editions print the tales in this copy's order.

Who printed the first edition of The Canterbury Tales, around 1476?

William Caxton, a cloth merchant who learned printing on the Continent, set up England's first press at Westminster in 1476 and made the Tales one of its first books.

Which famously patient wife endures her husband's cruel tests in the Clerk's Tale?

Griselda never protests as her husband takes away her children and pretends to remarry, and the Clerk ends by telling wives not to copy her: such meekness would be unbearable.

Which fraudulent science does Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman expose in the tale he tells?

Alchemy has ruined the Yeoman himself: years of failed gold-making for his master left him deep in debt, he says, and turned his once-rosy face the colour of lead.

How does the Host react when Chaucer the pilgrim tells his rhyming tale of Sir Thopas?

He cuts it short: the Host calls the rhyming worthless, so Chaucer answers with the long prose Tale of Melibee.

Which stanza form do the Clerk's and Man of Law's tales use instead of Chaucer's usual couplets?

Rhyme royal, a seven-line stanza Chaucer brought into English, carries four of the tales; it became the favourite form for long narrative poems for over a century after him.

Which two knights compete for Emelye in the Knight's Tale?

Palamon and Arcite are sworn friends until each glimpses Emelye from their prison window in Athens; Duke Theseus finally makes them settle it in a tournament.

In the Knight's Tale, how does the knight who wins the tournament for Emelye die?

His horse throws him when Pluto, at Saturn's request, sends up a terror from hell to startle it; dying, he tells Emelye to marry the rival he has just beaten.

Which play by Shakespeare and John Fletcher, first staged around 1613, is based on the Knight's Tale?

The Two Noble Kinsmen was printed in 1634 under both men's names, yet it took until the 20th century to win a regular place among Shakespeare's works.

What does the drunken Miller mean when he vows to 'quite' the Knight's Tale?

Repay it: 'quite' is kin to 'requite', and the contest runs on it, as one pilgrim after another answers the tale before with a story aimed at its teller.

In the Miller's Tale, which disaster does Nicholas falsely predict to trick the old carpenter?

A flood greater than Noah's is due on Monday night, he says, so the carpenter hangs tubs in the roof as lifeboats and sleeps in one while Nicholas slips off to bed with Alisoun.

In the Miller's Tale, what does Alisoun offer Absolon at her dark window instead of a kiss on the lips?

Her backside is what Absolon kisses in the dark; he comes back for revenge with a red-hot plough blade from the blacksmith, and it is Nicholas who gets branded.

How does the Wife of Bath's Prologue compare in length?

Twice as long as her tale, it is far longer than any other pilgrim's prologue: she needs the room to recount her five marriages and to argue that marrying again is no sin.

Why is the Wife of Bath deaf in one ear?

Her husband struck her after she tore pages from the book of wicked wives he kept reading aloud; by her account she won the quarrel and made him burn the book.

In the Wife of Bath's Tale, what does the knight learn women most desire?

Sovereignty over their husbands and lovers is the answer that saves his life; the old woman who supplied it claims him as her husband, then turns young and fair once he lets her choose.

Which Latin text, a warning against greed, does the Pardoner take as the theme of every sermon?

Radix malorum est cupiditas, 'greed is the root of evils', comes from 1 Timothy; he cheerfully admits that he preaches against avarice only to part his hearers from their money.

What are the three rioters of the Pardoner's Tale looking for when they meet the Old Man?

Death, to kill him, is their drunken vow after the plague takes a friend; the Old Man points them to an oak where they find gold instead, and they murder one another over it.

How does the youngest rioter in the Pardoner's Tale plan to keep all the gold?

He poisons their wine on a trip into town, but the other two have agreed to stab him on his return; they do, then drink his bottles, and nobody lives to spend the gold.

In the General Prologue, what does the Pardoner keep in a glass and pass off as saints' relics?

Pigs' bones in a glass, plus a pillowcase he calls Our Lady's veil: with such relics, the narrator says, he took more money in a day than a poor country priest earned in two months.

What are the names of the cock and his favourite hen in the Nun's Priest's Tale?

Chauntecleer and Pertelote quarrel over his nightmare of a fox: she blames indigestion and prescribes laxatives, he cites learned authorities on dreams, and the fox turns up anyway.

In the Nun's Priest's Tale, how does the captured cock escape from the fox's jaws?

He gets the fox to speak by urging it to taunt the pursuers, and flies into a tree the moment its jaws open; flattery had trapped him, and the fox's own pride sets him free.

The Nun's Priest's Tale is a mock epic based on an incident in which cycle of animal stories?

Chauntecleer has seven wives, of whom Pertelote is chief.

In the Merchant's Tale, where does young May meet her lover while her blind old husband waits below?

Up a pear tree: May climbs to her lover from her blind husband's back, and when his sight suddenly returns she insists that struggling with a man in a tree was the cure.

Which pilgrim's tale is a blood libel about Jews murdering a pious Christian boy?

The Prioress, so tender that she weeps over a mouse in a trap, tells of a seven-year-old schoolboy murdered for singing a hymn to Mary, a slander that was old long before Chaucer.

Which English religious movement, inspired by John Wycliffe, is mentioned in The Canterbury Tales?

Lollardy comes up as a joke: when a devout pilgrim rebukes the Host for swearing, the Host announces to the company that he can smell a 'Loller' in the wind.

A Canterbury Tale, the 1944 film that borrows Chaucer's pilgrim frame, was made by which British directing team?

Powell and Pressburger borrowed Chaucer's band of pilgrims to follow three wartime strangers along the old road to Canterbury, in a film made to show what Britain was fighting for.

Which Italian director filmed The Canterbury Tales in 1972?

Pier Paolo Pasolini cast himself as Chaucer in his bawdy film of the tales, which won the Golden Bear at the 1972 Berlin Film Festival.

What was the trade of Chaucer's father, John?

Vintner: John Chaucer was an important London wine merchant and deputy to the king's butler, a court connection that presumably won young Geoffrey his start as a page in a royal household.

What happened to Chaucer during the siege of Reims in 1360?

He was captured by the French while serving in Edward III's army, and in March 1360 the king himself put £16 towards his ransom.

Chaucer's wife Philippa is generally held to be the sister of which woman, later John of Gaunt's third wife?

Katherine Swynford was governess to Gaunt's children and for years his mistress before he married her in 1396, which made the poet, on the usual account, the duke's brother-in-law.

What daily reward for life did Edward III grant Chaucer in 1374?

A gallon of wine a day was granted on St George's Day, a feast when artistic work was traditionally rewarded, so it is assumed to have been payment for a poem now unknown.

Which royal post did Chaucer hold for twelve years?

Comptroller of Customs for the port of London meant checking the collectors of the wool duties; he held the job for twelve years and wrote several of his major poems while doing it.

For whom did Chaucer write A Treatise on the Astrolabe?

His ten-year-old son Lewis is addressed by name in the opening, where Chaucer explains that he writes in plain English because the boy's Latin is still too small for the scholars' versions.

Chaucer's grave became the seed of Poets' Corner in which great church?

Westminster Abbey probably buried him as a royal servant living in its precincts rather than as a poet; the corner took shape after his grander tomb of 1556 and Edmund Spenser's burial nearby in 1599.

Which Canterbury pilgrim ends the storytelling with a long prose treatise on penitence instead of a tale?

The Parson, asked for a fable to finish the game, refuses to tell 'fables and such wretchedness' and works through penitence and the seven deadly sins instead.

Which of Chaucer's other works is a long poem set during the Trojan War?

Troilus and Criseyde follows a Trojan prince whose lover is traded to the Greek camp and abandons him there; Shakespeare later told the same story in Troilus and Cressida.

What does Chaucer do in the closing passage of The Canterbury Tales?

Asks pardon for his worldly writings: he revokes his earlier poems by name, along with those Canterbury tales that tend toward sin; no winner of the contest is ever named, and the book ends in prayer.

Chaucer's royal mission of 1372–73 took him to Genoa and which other city?

Florence was his other stop on a mission sent to settle trade terms with Genoa; the Italian poetry he is thought to have met there gave him forms and stories he drew on in later poems.

Which pilgrim, trained as a carpenter, objects to the Miller's Tale and answers it with a story mocking a miller?

Osewold the Reeve takes the Miller's story of a fooled carpenter personally, so he answers with two students who get even with a thieving miller by bedding his wife and daughter.

In the Friar's Tale, who is the friendly yeoman that a corrupt summoner swears brotherhood with on the road?

A devil from hell, as he cheerfully admits, yet the summoner keeps the pact; when a widow he is cheating sincerely wishes him to the devil, his new brother carries him off.

Which poet wrote himself into the Canterbury pilgrimage as a monk in The Siege of Thebes, around 1420?

John Lydgate, a monk in real life, imagines joining Chaucer's pilgrims at Canterbury and adds his own tale of Thebes, set before the events of the Knight's Tale.

What kind of stories does the hunting-mad Monk tell until the Knight begs him to stop?

Tragedies of the fallen great, from Lucifer to rulers of his own day: he claims a hundred in his cell, and after seventeen the Knight breaks in to say they have had enough gloom.

In the Franklin's Tale, what must a lovesick squire make vanish to win a married lady?

The rocks along the coast terrify her for her absent husband's ship, so she names them as an impossible task; a magician hides them, but the squire ends by releasing her from the promise.

Which Hugo-winning 1989 science-fiction novel by Dan Simmons is built on the Tales' pilgrim frame?

Hyperion sends a band of pilgrims to the Time Tombs on a distant planet, each telling the tale of why they came, and like Chaucer's book it stops before they arrive.

In the Summoner's Tale, what 'gift' must a greedy friar share equally among his fellow friars?

A fart is what the sick man Thomas gives the friar who keeps pestering him for money; a squire then earns a new gown by proposing to share it out along the spokes of a cartwheel.

Zadie Smith's play The Wife of Willesden moves the Wife of Bath's tale to which Caribbean island?

Jamaica in the days of Queen Nanny of the Maroons replaces Arthur's court, and Nanny sends the guilty man on his quest; the Wife's prologue moves to a present-day London pub.

Sting's album title Ten Summoner's Tales puns on the Summoner's Tale and what else?

His birth name, Gordon Sumner, links him to Chaucer's Summoner, and the 1993 album keeps up the joke: its closing track is labelled 'Epilogue'.

Which sounded letter did later scribes drop from Chaucer's words, making his verse look irregular?

A final e was still pronounced in Chaucer's day and did grammatical work, marking plural adjectives; once it fell silent, copyists dropped it and editors padded lines that seemed too short.

Which Harry Potter book contains a fable of three brothers inspired by Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale?

Deathly Hallows prints 'The Tale of the Three Brothers' in full, the only story from The Tales of Beedle the Bard that appears inside a Harry Potter novel.

The Canterbury shrine that Chaucer's pilgrims set out for was destroyed in 1538 on which monarch's orders?

Henry VIII had the shrine torn down during the dissolution of the monasteries, ending more than three centuries of pilgrimage to the saint's tomb.

Which actor plays Geoffrey Chaucer as a debt-ridden gambler in the Heath Ledger film A Knight's Tale?

Paul Bettany won the London Film Critics' Circle award for British Supporting Actor for the role, in which the poet announces a peasant posing as a knight at jousts.

The Wife of Bath's Tale opens with a knight condemned for rape at which ruler's court?

King Arthur hands the knight over to Queen Guinevere, who offers to spare his life if he can solve a riddle within a year and a day.

In the Merchant's Tale, which sixty-year-old knight of Pavia marries a young bride called May?

January ignores the warnings of his friend Justinus and marries May, a girl of about twenty, while the flatterer Placebo cheers him on.

Which talking white bird does Phoebus turn black in the Manciple's Tale for revealing his wife's lover?

A crow reveals the affair, and Phoebus kills his wife in a rage, then blames the bird and curses it with black feathers and a harsh voice.

The Second Nun's Tale tells the life of which Roman martyr, now honoured as the patron saint of music?

Cecilia survives a night and a day in a bath of flames and three strokes of the executioner's sword, then preaches for three more days with her neck cut open.

Which figure heads the Monk's Tale's list of seventeen famous names, placed just ahead of Adam and Samson?

Lucifer opens the Monk's roll call, which runs on through Hercules, Nero and Julius Caesar to rulers who had died in Chaucer's own lifetime.

Which major film festival prize did the 1972 Italian film of The Canterbury Tales win?

The Golden Bear went to the second film in its director's 'Trilogy of Life', and he appears on screen himself as Geoffrey Chaucer.

Which dream-vision poem by Chaucer contains the first known link between St Valentine's Day and romantic love?

The Parlement of Foules, written around 1382, gathers birds to choose their mates on the saint's day, and no earlier writer is known to tie Valentine to romance.

The two students who bed their host's wife and daughter in the Reeve's Tale come from a college of which university?

Cambridge's Soler Hall, also known as King's Hall and later part of Trinity College, is their home, and the tale plays out nearby in the village of Trumpington.

In the Knight's Tale, which duke of Athens jails two Theban cousins and later stages a tournament between them?

Theseus at first means to execute the pair when he catches them fighting, but his wife and her sister plead for them, so each is told to return with 100 knights.

In Chaucer's Tale of Melibee, which aptly named wife talks her husband out of avenging an attack on their home?

Prudence wins him round with a stream of proverbs and learned quotations, and the Host says afterwards that he wishes his own wife had heard her.

Chaucer sat in the 1386 Parliament as a knight of the shire for which county?

Kent sent him to the 'Wonderful Parliament' of 1386, and he also served the county as a commissioner of the peace at a time when a French invasion was feared.

Which Arts and Crafts designer printed the lavish Kelmscott edition of Chaucer, with woodcuts after Edward Burne-Jones?

William Morris set 87 Burne-Jones wood engravings inside his own borders and initials, and finished the book in 1896, only months before he died.

Cambyuskan, the king showered with magic gifts in the Squire's Tale, is Chaucer's spelling of which conqueror's name?

Genghis Khan has worn his crown for twenty years and is holding his birthday feast when an envoy rides in with the gifts; the story then breaks off unfinished.

In the Squire's Tale, a strange knight brings King Cambyuskan a magic horse made of which metal?

Brass is the stuff of the first of four gifts; the others are a mirror that exposes enemies, a ring for understanding birds and a sword whose wounds only it can heal.

Which god, strolling in the garden with his queen, restores the blind old husband's sight in the Merchant's Tale?

Pluto acts out of outrage at the young wife's trick, but his own queen Proserpina at once hands her an alibi to talk her way out of it.

Which Italian poet does the Clerk of The Canterbury Tales claim to have met in Padua and credit for his story?

Petrarch had put the story into Latin shortly before his death, and Chaucer is thought to have worked from that text alongside a French translation of it.

In the Physician's Tale, how does the Roman knight Virginius keep his daughter from a corrupt judge who covets her?

He kills her himself, by the sword and with her consent, a detail found in neither Livy's history nor the Romance of the Rose, so Chaucer seems to have added it.

How does Chaucer's company of pilgrims, which sets out together from an inn in Southwark, travel the road to Canterbury?

On horseback is how the best-known illustrated manuscript famously pictures Chaucer himself, in one of its series of portraits of the storytellers.

Which fantasy novelist and Oxford philologist wrote a study of the students' northern dialect in the Reeve's Tale?

J.R.R. Tolkien read the paper to the Philological Society in 1931, and in 1939 he recited the tale itself on stage at Oxford's Summer Diversions.

Chaucer's patron and eventual brother-in-law John of Gaunt held which dukedom?

Lancaster's wealthy duke backed Chaucer for decades, and the two became brothers-in-law in 1396 when he took the sister of the poet's wife as his third wife.

Which English artist published a famous panoramic engraving of Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims in 1810?

William Blake first showed the picture at an exhibition he staged in his brother's haberdashery shop; few people came, but its catalogue essay on Chaucer is still anthologised.

Which sweeping change in English pronunciation set in after Chaucer's death, distancing his verse from modern speech?

The Great Vowel Shift ran from about 1400 to 1700 and reshaped the long vowels, which is the main reason English spelling and pronunciation drifted so far apart.

Which household object is moved in the dark to send a wife to the wrong bed in the Reeve's Tale?

A cradle at the foot of the bed is her landmark in the dark, so when a student shifts it to his own bed she climbs in beside him without knowing.

Which Canterbury pilgrim's tale of a hard-partying apprentice named Perkyn breaks off after only 58 lines?

The Cook gets only as far as his hero being sacked and moving in with a friend whose wife keeps a shop as a front for prostitution, and there the story stops.

In the Man of Law's Tale, the emperor's daughter is first shipped off to wed the Sultan of which land?

Syria's Sultan agrees to turn Christian to win her, so his furious mother has him and the wedding party massacred and the bride pushed out to sea.

Which poet hailed Chaucer as the father of English poetry and modernised three Canterbury tales in his Fables?

John Dryden gave the praise in the preface to his Fables of 1700, even though he misjudged the old pronunciation and thought Chaucer's rhythm irregular.

Which French genre of bawdy comic verse tale gave Chaucer the form of the Miller's, Reeve's and Shipman's tales?

Fabliau plots were common property across medieval Europe, and several that Chaucer reworked also turn up in a famous Italian story collection of his century.

Which emperor's daughter in the Man of Law's Tale is twice cast adrift at sea and survives both voyages?

Constance, called Custance by Chaucer, drifts to the coast of northern England, marries its king, and is cast out again after his mother falsifies royal letters.

Which friend of Chaucer wrote Confessio Amantis, a story collection sharing several plots with The Canterbury Tales?

John Gower was trusted enough to hold power of attorney over Chaucer's affairs while he was abroad in 1378, and the two poets praised each other in verse.

Which warrior queen who defied Rome is the only woman among the seventeen subjects of the Monk's Tale?

Zenobia ruled Palmyra and fought Rome until the emperor Aurelian captured her; the Monk has her walk before his triumph in Rome hung with golden chains.

In the Merchant's Tale, which young squire of the old knight's household becomes his new bride's secret lover?

Damyan falls for her at the wedding feast itself and slips her a love letter, and she later presses a key into warm wax so that he can copy it and meet her in secret.

In Chaucer's parody romance Sir Thopas, what kind of foe is Sir Olifaunt, who challenges the knight?

A giant is what Sir Olifaunt is, his name meaning elephant, and Thopas answers the challenge by riding home to his merry men for a feast of sweets before the promised fight.

In the Summoner's Tale, which object does a lord's squire propose using to share one 'gift' among twelve friars?

A cartwheel has twelve spokes, one for each friar, and the squire who thinks of it is rewarded by his lord with the cloth for a new gown.

Chaucer lived for twelve years above which gate in London's wall, where rebels poured into the city in 1381?

Aldgate's apartments were his home from 1374 to 1386, and he wrote some of his poems there; the gate itself was removed in 1761 to ease the traffic.

Which Oxford scholar and associate of the Inklings is known for his modern English version of The Canterbury Tales?

Nevill Coghill also turned the Tales into a 1968 stage musical that played in the West End and on Broadway and earned four Tony nominations.

Which boy of 1255, whose death was falsely blamed on England's Jews, is invoked at the close of one Canterbury tale?

Hugh of Lincoln was a boy of eight or nine found dead in a well; the king took up the accusation in person and had nineteen Jews put to death over it.

In the Second Nun's Tale, which Roman bridegroom converts after his new wife tells him an angel guards her chastity?

Valerian has to be baptised before he can see the angel for himself, so his wife sends him to find Saint Urban, who is in hiding, and he returns a convert.