Canterbury Tales

A detailed Summary of Canterbury Tales


The Canterbury Tales is a collection of accounts about a journey pilgrims made to and from the Canterbury Cathedral, composed by British writer Geoffrey Chaucer in the late 1300's. "Chaucer greatly increased the prestige of English as a literary language and extended the range of its poetic vocabulary and meters" (Encarta 1). In the tales, the host offers a contest to the pilgrims which requires

them to tell four stories during their trip . Chaucer ingeniously integrates the episodes with one another and also resplendently describes the personality, behavior, and general way of life of a variety of aspects of society in the Medieval Ages. The Canterbury Tales consists of twenty-four tales, two of which are unfinished. One of these unfinished accounts is the Tale of Sir Thopas.

The Tale of Sir Thopas begins with the narrator describing a fair and gallant knight who is from the far country of Flanders. It continues on characterizing this knight, Sir Thopas, as a handsome man who was skilled at hunting, horse riding,


One of the many prolific purposes of Chaucer's prose is to help describe more vividly the varying aspects of medieval society. This specific tale describes the honor and valor to which the people held their knights to, with some "deliberately outrageous ineptness within the character"(Payne 129). The account also includes some of the mythological twists in which storytellers exaggerated their tales with. Sir Thopas is a prime example of how society looked upon its

The narrator then describes Sir Thopas as a man of regal chivalry. " He was a knight adventurous, Wherefore he'd sleep within no house, But lay down in his hood; His pillow was his helmet bright, And by him browse his steed all night http://www.librarius.com/cantales.htm 3). At this point of the tale there is no conclusion. One reason for the lack of completion of this tale is most likely the death of Chaucer.

Chaucer " Gives the Tale of Sir Thopas a hilarious send-up as opposed to other more serious tales that indirectly disparage English literature" (P

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