Monday, March 28, 2011

Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is considered as one of the major beginning marks in English Literature. The Canterbury Tales, written in 14th century is a collection of short stories mainly in verse form. The stories in The Canterbury Tales are told by a group of 24 pilgrims on pilgrimage from Southwark to Canterbury to visit the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.


  One of the first few tales is called “The Man Of Law” in it The Man of Law tells a Romance tale of a Christian princess named Custance who is married to the Syrian Sultan on condition that he converts to Christianity. The Sultan's mother connives to prevent this and has Constance set adrift on the sea. Her adventures and trials continue after she is shipwrecked on the Northumberland coast.  I didn’t really like this one because I despise romance books. I think the moral is that you shouldn’t believe something someone tells you unless you really believe it.

                The Canterbury tales are the kind of book you read when you have nothing else to do and you have a glass of tea. The tea is to keep you awake. If you achieve that then the rest of the book isn’t that bad. The style of righting used in this book reminds me of the book the Knights of the Round Table, also a medieval adventure. The Canterbury Tales righting style reminds me of this because of the way the characters talk. They talk all like: “hail thou mistress” and stuff like that, you get the idea.


                I would give Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales four stars out of ten. One star because it’s a very famous book, one star because I was able to finish it, one star because for some unexplainable reason it reminds me of Monty python and the Holy Grail, and finally the last star because I somewhat enjoyed reading it. I would recommend this book for teenagers who like to read and are able to understand big words.