60 Fun Facts About The Canterbury Tales

In what language are The Canterbury Tales written?

Chaucer used a London dialect of late Middle English; the final -e was still pronounced and the Great Vowel Shift had not yet happened.

How many tales does the collection actually contain?

The Prologue promised four from each of some 30 pilgrims, about 120 stories; most scholars think the work was unfinished at Chaucer's death.

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

The martyr was reputed to have the power of healing the sinful.

Roughly when did Chaucer write The Canterbury Tales?

He died on 25 October 1400 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

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

Established in 1307 for the Abbot of Hyde, it stood on Borough High Street where the road to Canterbury and Dover began.

What is the name of the Host, the innkeeper who proposes the storytelling contest and judges it?

New research suggests the General Prologue pastiches the real Harry Bailey's 1381 poll-tax account of Southwark's inhabitants.

According to the Prologue, how many tales was each pilgrim meant to tell?

That would have made about 120 stories; only 24 exist.

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

The Knight wins; the drunken Miller then barges in ahead of the Monk to tell the second.

In which month does the pilgrimage begin, according to the famous opening lines?

The Prologue praises the month whose showers and warm west wind bring the earth back to life.

How many lines long is the General Prologue?

It introduces the pilgrims according to the three medieval estates: clergy, nobility and commoners.

Which Italian work has more parallels with The Canterbury Tales than any other?

A quarter of the tales have a parallel there; its storytellers have fled the Black Death, and it too ends with an author's apology.

Which two early manuscripts, apparently by the same scribe, are the most important witnesses to the text?

The scribe has been identified as Adam Pinkhurst, possibly the 'Adam' Chaucer scolds in a short poem.

Where has the illustrated Ellesmere manuscript been kept since 1917?

Henry Huntington bought the Bridgewater library privately through Sotheby's in 1917.

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

It was among the first books printed by the first person to use a printing press in England.

How many manuscripts of the Tales survive?

Only the Prick of Conscience survives in more copies among vernacular English texts, giving the Tales medieval bestseller status.

Into how many 'Fragments' do scholarly editions usually divide the Tales?

Tales within a Fragment are linked, but the order between Fragments is uncertain; modern editions mostly follow the Ellesmere order.

Which two tales are told by Chaucer himself, travelling with the pilgrims?

Sir Thopas is a doggerel parody of romance and the only tale outside Chaucer's usual metre besides the prose pieces.

Which four tales use rhyme royal rather than Chaucer's usual couplets?

His ten-syllable line was an ancestor of iambic pentameter and the later 'riding rhyme'.

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

They fall in love with her from their prison window in Theseus's Athens; Chaucer took the story from Boccaccio's Teseida.

How does Arcite die after winning the tournament in the Knight's Tale?

Saturn intervenes on Venus's side; dying, Arcite tells Emelye to marry Palamon.

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

A 1566 play on the same story by Richard Edwardes is lost; the 2001 film A Knight's Tale borrows the title.

What word does the drunken Miller use to describe paying back the Knight's Tale with his own?

The Reeve, a former carpenter, then 'quites' the Miller in turn with a tale disparaging a miller.

In the Miller's Tale, how does Nicholas persuade the carpenter John to spend the night in a tub hung from the barn roof?

John lives in Oxford with his much younger wife Alisoun; Nicholas is his lodger, a clever student.

What does Alisoun offer the parish clerk Absolon at her window in the dark instead of a kiss on the lips?

Absolon returns with a red-hot coulter from the blacksmith to take revenge.

The Wife of Bath's Prologue is notable for what?

She defends women who, like her, have married several times.

In the Wife of Bath's Tale, what must the condemned knight discover within a year and a day to save his life?

Guinevere and her ladies had interceded to spare him from execution for rape.

What answer does the ugly old woman give the knight in the Wife of Bath's Tale?

She then demands his hand in marriage as her promised favour, an example of the 'loathly lady' motif.

What is the Pardoner's sermon 'theme', taken from 1 Timothy?

'Greed is the root of all evils'; he admits he preaches against the very sin he practises.

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

He sends them to an oak tree where they find eight bushels of gold florins and forget their quest.

Where is the Pardoner's Tale set?

The three young men spend their days in brothels and taverns before the funeral bell sends them after Death.

Which fake relic does the Pardoner claim has miraculous powers when dipped in a well?

He also has a mitten, and warns that anyone guilty of horrible sin will get no benefit from either.

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

The proud rooster dreams of a fox; Pertelote blames indigestion; the fox turns out to be real.

How does Chauntecleer escape from the fox that has snatched him?

Flattery had got him caught; the fox's own pride lets him go, and he flies into a tree.

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.

Which pair of pilgrims, both wielders of the Church's secular power, are portrayed as deeply corrupt and hinted to be in a relationship?

Summoners hauled sinners before Church courts; corrupt ones frightened people into bribes.

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

The Monk and the Prioress fall short of their orders' ideals without being as corrupt as the Pardoner or Summoner.

Which early English religious movement led by John Wycliffe is mentioned in the Tales?

The Tales are also among the first English works to mention paper.

Which 1944 Powell and Pressburger film is loosely based on the narrative frame of the Tales?

It was wartime propaganda showcasing Kent; Pasolini filmed several of the tales in 1972.

Which Italian director filmed The Canterbury Tales in 1972?

Nevill Coghill's modern English translation was the basis of a stage musical first performed in 1964.

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

Several generations of the family had been vintners and merchants in Ipswich; Chaucer himself later drew a royal gallon of wine a day.

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

Edward III paid the ransom himself.

Chaucer's wife Philippa Roet was the sister of which woman who became John of Gaunt's third wife?

Chaucer's first major poem, The Book of the Duchess, mourned Gaunt's first wife Blanche.

What daily reward did Edward III grant Chaucer for some unspecified task?

Richard II converted the liquid stipend to money in 1378.

Which royal post did Chaucer obtain in June 1374?

He later served as Justice of the Peace and MP for Kent, and Clerk of the King's Works from 1389.

For whom did Chaucer write A Treatise on the Astrolabe?

It earned him fame as an astronomer as well as a poet.

Chaucer was the first writer buried in what part of Westminster Abbey?

He had taken a lease on a house within the abbey close on 24 December 1399, months before his death.

Roughly how many English words are first attested in Chaucer's manuscripts?

Thomas Hoccleve hailed him as 'the firste fyndere of our fair langage'.

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

The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame and the Parlement of Foules are his other major poems.

Chaucer's son Thomas held which office among others?

Thomas's daughter Alice married the Duke of Suffolk, and a descendant was named heir to the throne by Richard III.

Chaucer's first diplomatic mission to Italy, when he may have read the Decameron, took place in which year?

He visited Genoa and Florence again in 1373 and was sent to the Visconti in Milan in 1378.

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

His name and trade come from the tale's own prologue.

In the 15th-century Tale of Beryn, which pilgrim pursues Kate the barmaid once the party reaches Canterbury?

On the way home the Merchant restarts the storytelling with Beryn's adventures in Egypt.

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

His long story about Thebes was placed before the events of the Knight's Tale and first printed by John Stow in 1561.

The Tale of Gamelyn appears in which notoriously error-ridden early manuscript of the Tales?

Some scholars think Chaucer meant to rework Gamelyn as a tale for the Yeoman, though it is now rejected as his.

In one version of the spurious Plowman's Tale, which two creatures debate church corruption?

The pelican takes a protest position close to John Wycliffe's ideas.

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

Richard Dawkins borrowed the same structure for The Ancestor's Tale, in which animal pilgrims seek their common ancestor.

Which composer completed a three-act opera called The Canterbury Tales in 1961?

Its acts cover the Wife of Bath's, Pardoner's and Nun's Priest's tales.

Zadie Smith's 2021 debut play The Wife of Willesden relocates the Wife of Bath's tale to which era and place?

The prologue and tale are told during a modern-day bar crawl; the play later ran at the American Repertory Theater.

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

Procol Harum's Keith Reid, by contrast, denies that 'as the miller told his tale' refers to Chaucer at all.

In Chaucer's Middle English, why did the final -e that scribes dropped actually matter?

The sound was lost soon after Chaucer's death, so copyists' inconsistency long made him look careless.