the canterbury tales · chaucer

Chaucer's unfinished Middle English masterpiece from the 1390s frames a storytelling contest among pilgrims riding to Canterbury, each tale voiced by its teller. The tales read here, the Wife of Bath, the Clerk, the Merchant and the Franklin, form the so-called marriage group, arguing over who should hold sovereignty in marriage and what love, patience and honour cost.

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, translated by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003). Read in Sophomore Spring at Torrey Honors: the General Prologue; the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale; the Clerk's Prologue and Tale, with Chaucer's Envoy; the Merchant's Prologue, Tale and Epilogue; the Words of the Franklin to the Squire; and the Franklin's Prologue and Tale.