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The Canterbury Tales
8.5Geoffrey Chaucer
Chaucer's fourteenth-century frame-tale established the English literary tradition — by writing in Middle English rather than Latin or French, he made English a literary language.
GBM Assessment (Score: 8.5/10)
Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is the foundation of the English literary tradition, a wide-ranging portrait of medieval English society encompassing all social classes from knight to miller. By writing in the East Midlands dialect of Middle English rather than in Latin or French, Chaucer helped establish English as a literary language worthy of the highest art.
Produced between approximately 1387 and 1400, the Canterbury Tales established the East Midlands dialect as the basis for standard English. John Dryden called Chaucer the "father of English poetry," recognizing his role in elevating the vernacular to a vehicle for sophisticated literary expression. The work has inspired numerous BBC adaptations and remains a keystone of English literary study.
The High & Late Middle Ages, c. 1274-1440
The medieval synthesis peaks and shatters. Aquinas completes the Summa Theologica. Marco Polo reaches China. Then catastrophe: the Black Death kills a third of Europe (1347-1351). Boccaccio's Decameron frames its tales against the plague. Chaucer gives English literature its first masterwork. Luo Guanzhong novelizes China's Three Kingdoms era. In this same tumultuous period, someone creates the Voynich Manuscript—a 240-page illustrated codex in an undeciphered script that remains one of history's greatest unsolved mysteries. The Great Western Schism splits the papacy. The Hundred Years' War ravages France. Yet from this upheaval, the Renaissance begins to stir.
Awards & Adaptations
Dryden: 'father of English poetry.' BBC adaptations.
Recommended Edition
W.W. Skeat (1894); F.N. Robinson (1933)
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