The Wife of Bath
A veteran of marriage who turns experience into a counter-authority.
Medieval · Narrative verse · c. 1400
The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer
Pilgrims riding to Canterbury agree to tell tales. The road becomes a theater of English types—pious, bawdy, fraudulent, and vividly alive.
Estates satire
Characters
The Pardoner
A preacher who sells what he does not believe, and knows it.
The Knight
Opening emblem of an older chivalric order already slightly out of date.
Themes
Estates and hypocrisy
Social roles speak, then betray themselves in the telling.
Tale-telling
Stories are contests of status as much as entertainment.
Motifs
A sacred frame that keeps slipping into a tavern.
The road holds incompatible genres in one company.