Canterbury Tales is a collection of tales written by the late fourteenth-century poet Geoffrey Chaucer. The tales are presented in a format of stories told at a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims on their way to the cathedral of Canterbury. The purpose of this article is to discuss the structure of the Canterbury Tales.
Read more about the Premise of the Canterbury Tales.
What is the Structure of the Canterbury Tales
According to the prologue, Canterbury Tales collection was supposed to have 120 tales. Each character was supposed to narrate four tales – two tales on their way to the cathedral and two tales on their way home. However, Canterbury Tales only contains 24 tales; Chaucer died in 1400 before completing the collection.
There is much debate about the order of the tales. The manuscripts of the work suggest several different orders and different scholars have also suggested several structures. The tales are usually divided into ten fragments. The order within these fragments is usually considered to be correct. But the order of the fragments themselves is often under debate. Given below is a commonly accepted and used order of the tales.
|
Fragment |
Tales |
|
Fragment I |
General Prologue The Knight’s Tale The Miller’s Tale The Reeve’s Tale The Cook’s Tale |
|
Fragment II |
The Man of Law’s Tale |
|
Fragment III |
The Wife of Bath’s Tale The Friar’s Tale The Summoner’s Tale |
|
Fragment IV |
The Clerk’s Tale The Merchant’s Tale |
|
Fragment V |
The Squire’s Tale The Franklin’s Tale |
|
Fragment VI |
The Physician’s Tale The Pardoner’s Tale |
|
Fragment VII |
The Shipman’s Tale The Prioress’s Tale Sir Thopas’ Tale The Tale of Melibee The Monk’s Tale The Nun’s Priest’s Tale |
|
Fragment VIII |
The Second Nun’s Tale The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale |
|
Fragment IX |
The Manciple’s Tale |
|
Fragment X |
The Parson’s Tale |
The order of fragment IV and V changes in different manuscripts. But fragment I and II usually follow each other and VI and VII, IX and X can be also seen in order in the old manuscripts.
Style of the Canterbury Tales
Chaucer uses a variety of literary forms, rhetoric devices and linguistic styles in this work. It is not incorrect to say that he uses different styles with different characters so as to reflect their social status and learning. Thus, different tales shows different attitudes life such as comic, pious, earthy, bawdy, and satirical.
Most of the tales, except the Tale of Melibee and the Parson’s Tale, are written in verse form. The tales are written in Middle English.
Image Courtesy:
“William Blake – Canterbury Pilgrims Picture” By William Blake – Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims picture – (Public Domain) via Commons Wikimedia
