Chaucer’s General prologue and

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are about a group of pilgrims that are traveling to Canterbury to pay homage to St. Thomas Becket, ex-Archbishop of Canterbury, current martyr. Chaucer's pilgrims assemble at the Tabard Inn where the host of the inn, suggests that each pilgrim tell 2 tales each way on the pilgrimage “That ech of yow, to shorte with oure weye,In this viage shal telle tales tweye” (lines 791-792 General Prologue). There are 29 pilgrims, Pilgrim Chaucer and the Host. This assemblege of 31 pilgrims then would make for a total of 124 tales.

Chaucer creates a diverse collection of characters. The pilgrims represent a wide variety of occupations and class status. The three class stations in Chaucer's time were the clergy, the nobility and everybody else not in the first 2 groups. To wit in the Canterbury Tales we have a monk “A MONK ther was, a fair for the maistrie,” (line 165 General Prologue) representing clergy, a knight “ A KNYGHT ther was, and that a worthy man,” (line 41 General Prologue) as nobility and a ordinary guy the miller “Ther was also a REVE, and a MILLERE,” (line 542 General Prologue). The main narrator of the Tales is an ordi

THE WIFE OF BATH thinks very highly of herself and her skill as a weaver “Of clooth-makyng she hadde swich an haunt, She passed hem of Ypres and of Gaunt.“ (lines 447-448 General Prologue). She lets us know she's entitled to make the first offering at church services, an honor carrying great social prestige. She shows off her Sunday clothes with evident pride, including ten pounds” I dorste swere they weyeden ten pound” (line 454 General Prologue) of coverchiefs, finely textured veils arranged over her head. Her clothing tells us she is no shy. But we're more interested in her famous love life than in her fashions. She's had five husbands “Housbondes at chirche dore I have had five” (line 6 The Wife of Bath’s) later, in her Prologue to the tale she tells, she gives the histories of all five-not to mention other company in youth. She's an old hand at pilgrimages, and, it's implied, the loose morals that sometimes go along. She's gap-toothed “Gat-tothed was she, soothly for to seye.” (line 468 General Prologue), a medieval sign that some believe had to do with sexual accomplishment, or with a bold, faithless nature, or with traveling. The Wife of Bath, we find out, has plenty of all three. The "remedies of love" implies she knows of Ovid's ancient work of the same name, which deals with all the rules of the love game. The idea of knowing the rules of the game, esp

Some topics in this essay:
Wife Bath’s, Bath’s Chaucer, Ypres Gaunt“, REVE MILLERE”, Bath’s Prologue, Canterbury Tales, Chaucer Host, Tabard Inn, Wife Bath, Dame Alice, wife bath’s, wife bath, tales pilgrims, canterbury tales, ordinary guy,