The Canterbury Tales

Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 1400

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue–“Chaucer’s Tales”

“The Monk’s Tale”–“The Pardoner’s Tale”

“The Wife of Bath’s Tale”–“Chaucer’s Retractions”

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Pilgrimage

All through The Canterbury Tales, the storytellers are on the move. They’re making a journey to the famous shrine of St. Thomas Becket—a near-contemporary saint to Chaucer’s pilgrims, only as far in time from them as Benjamin Franklin is from now. This was a common pilgrimage, one that people make as a matter of course “When in April the sweet showers fall,” but it also sets up many of the book’s questions about virtue, the role of religion in daily life, and the value of principles (3). Becket, martyred for refusing to allow the state to exert power over the church, was also a complicated and controversial figure; some argue it was likely power hunger over piety that motivated his resistance.

The pilgrims’ journey to Becket’s shrine—a step-by-step adventure, in the company of a cheerfully motley crew—thus symbolizes the journey of life itself. Together, the pilgrims are travelling toward a holy place, but holiness is as complicated and as human as it is divine.

Spring

It’s not just spring in the frame narrative of The Canterbury Tales, but in many of the stories themselves. Memorably, in the “Squire’s Tale,” a maiden out for a morning stroll takes in “the season and the dawn-light springing/And noise of all the birds in heaven singing,/For instantly she knew what they were saying/And understood the meaning in their maying” (399). This image of human connectedness with nature gestures to the general role spring plays in the Tales. From the famous “Prologue,” with its images of April flowers and singing birds, spring is an image of fertile, lusty, joyful life energy itself; it fills the pilgrims and the landscape alike.

Flatulence

You can’t go far in The Canterbury Tales without encountering flatulence. There’s the “Miller’s Tale,” with its “fart/as loud as if it were a thunder-clap,” the philosophical disquisition on equitable fart distribution in the “Summoner’s Tale,” and plenty of lesser farts in between (105). These farts often serve as a literal and figurative deflation, insults that puncture the illusions of schemers and lovers alike. Flatulence, in the book’s world, is an answer to lust and greed, but also to high ideals and lofty philosophy. Its earthiness reminds the reader that, underneath human plots and dreams alike, humans are still animals—gaseous, natural, and rude as any barnyard creature.