Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, composed in the last decade of the fourteenth century, are the first great work of the main tradition of English literature, and, in particular, launch the comic muse so characteristic of prose narrative in England. Examine the wide social and psychological diversity of Chaucer’s pilgrimages as they wend their way to Canterbury and tell their tales, focusing especially on the cosmopolitan Knight, the ribald Miller, the moralistic Clerk, and the inimitably individual Wife of Bath. Please use Neville Coghill's modern translation.