What is the significance of Canterbury?

What is the significance of Canterbury?

Canterbury has been a European pilgrimage site of major importance for over 800 years since the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in 1170. Today it is one of the most beautiful and historic cities in England.

What is so special about Canterbury in the Canterbury Tales?

Canterbury Cathedral was one of the most important centres of pilgrimage in Medieval England. There has been a cathedral at Canterbury since 597 when St. Augustine baptised the Saxon king Ethelbert. The Archbishop of Canterbury was the most senior religious figure in the land and he was based at the cathedral.

What was the significance of the Canterbury Tales being written in English what influences the language an author chooses to write in?

One of the reasons Chaucer is so important is that he made the decision to write in English and not French. In the centuries following the Norman invasion, French was the language spoken by those in power. The Canterbury Tales was one of the first major works in literature written in English.

What were Chaucer’s most important contributions?

In addition to his extensive body of literature, his poetry made three important contributions to English literature: he wrote in the English Vernacular and he is credited with introducing iambic pentameter and the Rhyme Royal to English poetry. He is best known for The Canterbury Tales.

What is Chaucer’s purpose in writing the prologue?

“The General Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales serves two main functions: to offer context for the text to follow and to introduce all of the pilgrims. In fulfilling both of these purposes, Chaucer also inserts subtle criticism of certain characters and satirizes aspects of life in the Middle Ages.

What is the story behind the Canterbury Tales?

Canterbury Tales is a frame story because each of its thirty characters narrates or tells their “own” story as the novel progresses.

Why is Canterbury Tales important?

The Canterbury Tales is also important because of Chaucer ‘s decision to write in English, specifically Middle English. In the late 14th century, French was still the primary literary language of those in power. The Canterbury Tales became one of the first major works of literature to be written in English.

What is the Order of the Canterbury Tales?

Order of The Canterbury Tales. The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories, mostly in verse, written by Geoffrey Chaucer chiefly from 1387 to 1400. They are held together in a frame story of a pilgrimage on which each member of the group is to tell two tales on the way to Canterbury, and two on the way back.

What are the General Prologue in the Canterbury Tales?

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes,and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,