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Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340–1400)
The Canterbury Tales1476–1477

Grenville Collection EPB G.11585
By permission of The British Library

 

Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales
1476–1477

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The British Library
London
United Kingdom

Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales towards the end of the fourteenth century in English, rather than the more usual Latin or French. Although his work is now most often read in modernised versions, his original English can still be understood by a reader prepared to consider the sounds of the words rather than their spelling.

The Canterbury Tales takes the form of 22 stories told by a group of pilgrims travelling from London to Canterbury to visit the tomb of Thomas à Becket, the archbishop who was murdered in his Cathedral in 1170 at the behest of Henry II. The story of the pilgrimage itself sets the framework for the individual tales. Among the storytellers are a Prioress, a Miller, a Clerk, a Wife of Bath, a Friar, a Knight and his Squire, and a Pardoner—the church commissioner who sold indulgences, or remissions of punishment still owing for sin after Church absolution had been granted. Pilgrims came from all levels of medieval society and the members of the group in The Canterbury Tales reflect this variety, and varying levels of piety.

The English merchant William Caxton (c.1422–c.1491) first came into contact with the printing of books in Cologne, Germany, around 1471. He began publishing around 1473–1474 in Bruges, in present-day Belgium. There he published his own English translation of a French courtly romance, The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, the first book to have been printed in the English language.

Around 1476 Caxton established his press at Westminster, and The Canterbury Tales, possibly the most famous of his works, was among the first books he produced. He concentrated on producing books in English, for which there would be no international competition.