Canterbury tales

2. THE INFLUENCE OF OTHER GENRES OF MEDIEVAL LITERATURE ON THE "Canterbury Tales"
As mentioned earlier, The Canterbury Tales is an encyclopedia of poetic genres: here is a courtly story, and a household short story, and a la , and a fablio, and a fable, and a parody of knightly adventurous poetry, and didactic narrative in verse.
The stories of the monastery chaplain and the steward have a fable character. The story of the seller of indulgences echoes one of the plots used in the Italian collection " Novellino ", and contains elements of a folk tale and a parable (the search for death and the fatal role of the found gold lead to the mutual extermination of friends).
The most vivid and original are the stories of the miller, the majordomo , the skipper, the Carmelite, the bailiff of the church court, the canon's servant, revealing closeness to the fablio and, in general, to the medieval tradition of the novelistic type.
The spirit of the fablio emanates from the story of the Bat weaver about herself. In this narrative group, there are the themes of adultery and the tricks of cheating and counter-tricking associated with it ( in the stories of the miller, the majordomo and the skipper), familiar to both the fablio and the classic short story. In the story of the bailiff of the church court, the brightest description of the monk who extorts the gift of the church from the dying is given, and the rude response joke of the patient is sarcastically described, rewarding the extortionist with stinking “air”, which still needs to be divided among the monks. In the story of the Carmelite, another extortionist appears in the same satirical vein , "cunning" and "dashing fellow ", "despicable bailiff, pimp, thief ". At the moment when the church bailiff tries to rob the poor old woman, and she sends him to hell in despair, the devil present at the same time takes the soul of the bailiff to hell. The story of the canon's servant deals with the popular theme of exposing the roguery of the alchemists.
The innovation of J. Chaucer lies in the synthesis of genres in one work. So almost every story of his belongs to a certain genre, and this makes his "Canterbury Tales" a unique encyclopedia of genres of the Middle Ages.⁸
Thus, we have come to the conclusion that Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is a unique encyclopedia of medieval literary genres. Among them are a courtly tale, and a household short story, and a le , and a fablio, and a folk ballad, and a parody of knightly adventurous poetry, and a fable, and a didactic narrative in verse.