Geoffrey Chaucer 1383(?)-1400

The Canterbury Tales: The Prologue

• The tale begins on April 11, 1387.
• The narrator joins a party of 29 pilgrims who are traveling to the shrine at Canterbury.
• In The Prologue, Chaucer describes most of the pilgrims in great detail.

• Chaucer serves as the narrator of the Tales.
• http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01184/arts-graphics-2008_1184459a.jpg

The Contest

• A storytelling contest is sponsored by the host, Harry Bailey, of Bailey’s Tavern.
• The pilgrims are supposed to tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back.
• The host will judge the contest.
• The prize is a free dinner.

• The host proposes a contest.
• http://logicophilosophicus.org/cigar_news/images/Canterbury_Tales.png

The Pilgrims

• See your chart with the list of attendees on the trip.
• How were they viewed for level of respect?
• How many were from the religious sect?

Parliament of Birds

• The Parlement of Foules (modernized: Parliament of Fowls), also called the Parlement of Briddes (Parliament of Birds) or the Assemble of Foules (Assembly of Fowls), is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer (1343?–1400) made up of approximately 700 lines. The poem, which is in the form of a dream vision in rhyme royal stanza, contains one of the earliest references to the idea that St. Valentine's Day is a special day for lovers.
• Oruch's survey of the literature finds no association between Valentine and romance prior to Chaucer. He concludes that Chaucer is likely to be "the original mythmaker in this instance."

The poem begins with the narrator reading Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis in the hope of learning some "certeyn thing". When he falls asleep, Scipio Africanus the Elder appears and guides him up through the celestial spheres to a gate promising both a "welle of grace" and a stream that "ledeth to the sorweful were/ Ther as a fissh in prison is al drye" (reminiscent of the famous grimly inscribed gates in Dante's Inferno). After some deliberation at the gate, the narrator enters and passes through Venus’s dark temple with its friezes of doomed lovers and out into the bright sunlight. Here Nature is convening a parliament at which the birds will all choose their mates. The three tercel (male) eagles make their case for the hand of a formel (female) eagle until the birds of the lower estates begin to protest and launch into a comic parliamentary debate, which Nature herself finally ends.

• The poem begins with the narrator reading Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis in the hope of learning some "certeyn thing". When he falls asleep, Scipio Africanus the Elder appears and guides him up through the celestial spheres to a gate promising both a "welle of grace" and a stream that "ledeth to the sorweful were/ Ther as a fissh in prison is al drye" (reminiscent of the famous grimly inscribed gates in Dante's Inferno). After some deliberation at the gate, the narrator enters and passes through Venus’s dark temple with its friezes of doomed lovers and out into the bright sunlight. Here Nature is convening a parliament at which the birds will all choose their mates. The three tercel (male) eagles make their case for the hand of a formel (female) eagle until the birds of the lower estates begin to protest and launch into a comic parliamentary debate, which Nature herself finally ends.