Telling Tales

This is the book that proved ordinary people — a miller, a widow, a conman — could carry great literature. Chaucer gives each pilgrim a voice so distinct you can hear class, vanity, and desire in a single sentence. Read it for the plots, stay for the portraits: the Prioress's brooch, the Wife's gap teeth, the Pardoner's fake relics. Essential for anyone studying GCSE English Literature or anyone who suspects the Middle Ages were duller than we are.

1. 1

   Act 1

   April at the Tabard Inn

   It is April in Southwark, and pilgrims are stirring. At the Tabard Inn, the narrator falls in with twenty-nine travellers bound for Canterbury Cathedral, and the Host, Harry Bailey, turns the journey into a contest: each pilgrim will tell two tales on the way out and two on the way back, and the best storyteller wins a free supper at the inn on their return. Then comes the roll call. The Knight is a worthy man who has fought at Alexandria and in Prussia, yet is meek as a maid and never speaks villainy; his son the Squire, about twenty, with curled locks, has served in Flanders, Artois, and Picardy. The Prioress, Madame Eglantyne, sings through her nose, speaks French after the school of Stratford-at-Bow, weeps over a mouse in a trap, and wears a brooch reading 'Amor vincit omnia'. The Monk loves hunting and greyhounds and shrugs off the old strict rule of Saint Maurus or Saint Benedict — why should he study and drive himself mad with books? The Friar Huberd knows taverns and barmaids better than lepers, lisps out of affectation, and carries pins and pocket-knives for pretty girls. The Wife of Bath is somewhat deaf, bold-faced, five times married at the church door, gap-toothed, spurred, hatted as broad as a buckler. Against them stands the poor Parson, rich in holy thought, who will not excommunicate for unpaid tithes and says if gold rust, what shall iron do? Then the Miller, red-bearded, warted, plays the bagpipes and leads the company out of town — warning the reader first that a churl's churlish tale awaits, and anyone offended should turn the page.

2. 2

   Act 2

   The Knight's Tale: Love, Fortune, and a Falling Saddle-Bow

   Duke Theseus of Athens rides home with his new queen Hippolyta, the Amazon he has conquered, when weeping widows in black block the road to Thebes. Creon, the tyrant, has refused their husbands' bodies burial. Theseus swears an oath, defeats Creon, takes the city — and in a heap of corpses finds two young knights of royal Theban blood, Palamon and Arcite, still breathing. He sends them to Athens, imprisoned perpetually in a tower. Years pass. One May dawn, both knights see Emily, Theseus's sister-in-law, walking in the garden, fresh as the season. Palamon claims he loved her first as a goddess; Arcite answers that love is free and he will love her too. Sworn brotherhood curdles into rivalry. Arcite is freed through a friend's intervention but banished on pain of death; Palamon stays caged, each envying the other's lot. Arcite sneaks back disguised as a labourer named Philostrate and serves in Theseus's household. After seven years Palamon drugs his jailer and escapes, hiding in a grove — where Arcite rides out at dawn to make a garland in honour of May and speaks aloud of his love. Palamon leaps from the bushes, accuses him of treachery, and they agree to fight to the death next day. Theseus, hunting with Hippolyta and Emily, catches them fighting like two wild boars. Condemned to die, they are saved when the queen and Emily weep and plead for mercy: in fifty weeks each shall return with one hundred knights and fight a tournament for Emily's hand. Before the battle, Palamon prays to Venus for Emily's love, Arcite to Mars for victory, Emily to Diana to remain a maiden — or to have the one who loves her most. Saturn promises Venus her knight shall win. Arcite's forces capture Palamon and Theseus declares him victor — but a fury sent by Pluto at Saturn's request startles his horse, and Arcite is thrown and crushed by his own saddle-bow. Dying, he tells Emily that if she ever marries, she should remember Palamon, the gentle knight who loves her faithfully. After an elaborate funeral, Theseus speaks of the First Mover who makes the chain of love, counsels the pair to marry, and Palamon and Emily are wed with bliss and melody.

3. 3

   Act 3

   The Miller's Tale: A Flood That Never Came

   In Oxford, the rich old carpenter John has married Alison, eighteen, wild and fair as a weasel, her body slim as a colt's. He rents a room to Nicholas, a poor scholar learned in astrology who can forecast rain — and Nicholas makes a pass at Alison, who agrees to deceive her husband. Meanwhile the parish clerk Absolon, all curled golden hair and fiddle-playing, sings under her window at night. Nicholas spins his scheme: he persuades John that a flood greater than Noah's is coming on Monday night. John must hang three kneading-tubs from the rafters, each stocked with provisions and an axe, so they can cut the ropes and float away when the waters rise. Simple and jealous for his young wife, John labours at the tubs; that night all three climb in, and John falls asleep exhausted. While he snores, Nicholas and Alison slip down to the bedroom. Absolon arrives at the window begging a kiss, and Alison puts her naked backside out instead — he kisses it in the dark. Enraged, he fetches a red-hot coulter from the smithy. Back at the window, he asks for another kiss; Nicholas sticks his backside out and lets fly a fart, and Absolon brands him on the buttock with the hot iron. Nicholas screams for water. John, hearing 'Water!', thinks the flood has come, cuts his rope, and crashes to the floor, breaking his arm. The neighbours laugh at the cuckolded carpenter.

4. 4

   Act 4

   The Wife of Bath and the Pardoner: Mastery, Money, and Death

   The Wife of Bath opens by declaring that experience, though no written authority, is right enough for her to speak of the woe that is in marriage. Five husbands, all wedded at the church door, and she thanks God for every one. She dismisses the Church's teaching on virginity — if everyone were a virgin, who would engender more virgins? — and vows to use her instrument as freely as her Maker sent it. She governed her first three old, rich husbands by false accusations, nagging, and withholding sex until they gave her land and treasure. Her fourth, a reveller with a mistress, she made fry in his own grease by pretending to have a lover herself. Her fifth, Jankyn, a clerk of twenty when she was forty, she loved best though he beat her; nightly he read aloud from his book of wicked wives. One night she tore three leaves out and knocked him into the fire; he struck her on the head so hard she lay as dead. Reviving, she cried, 'O hast thou slain me, false thief? And for my land thus hast thou murdered me? Ere I be dead, yet will I kiss thee.' He begged forgiveness — and she struck him again. Peace came when he gave her the bridle entirely, burned his book, and said, 'Do as thee list the term of all thy life.' Her tale, set in King Arthur's days, follows a knight of the king's household who rapes a maiden and is condemned to death — until the queen and her ladies win mercy, and the queen sets his test: what thing is it that women most desire? He has a year and a day. No two answers agree — riches, honour, jolliness, fine clothes, lust in bed, to be widowed and wed again. At the deadline, dancing ladies in a forest vanish, leaving an old ugly woman who promises the answer if he grants her next request. Before the queen and all the assembled women, he declares that women most desire sovereignty over their husbands and lovers, and to be above them in mastery. No woman contradicts him. The hag claims her price: marriage. He protests at her age, ugliness, and low birth, but the wedding happens in private, no joy or feast. In bed, she lectures him on true gentility from God and virtuous deeds, and on poverty as an honest thing that brings one closer to God — then offers a choice: old, ugly, and faithful, or young, fair, and unfaithful. He sighs, 'I put me in your wise governance; choose for yourself which may be most honour to you and me also.' 'Then have I got the mastery of you,' she replies, since she may choose and govern as she wishes. She tells him to kiss her — and she has become a young, fair lady. They live in perfect joy. The Pardoner, before his tale, openly boasts of fraudulent preaching, always on the theme 'Radix malorum est Cupiditas' — the love of money is the root of all evil. He shows fake relics, a sheep's shoulder bone he claims is from a holy Jew's sheep and a mitten that will multiply grain, preaching against avarice only to win pennies, caring nothing if souls go blackberry-picking after death. His tale, set in Flanders, follows three young rioters drinking in a tavern early in the morning when a bell tolls for a corpse. A serving boy tells them the dead man was an old friend, slain by a privy thief called Death, who has killed many in the plague. Swearing brotherhood, they vow to slay this false traitor Death — and meet an old man wrapped in cloth who greets them meekly. No one will change youth for his age, he says; he knocks with his staff on the ground crying, 'Dear mother, let me in!' He points them to a crooked path: they will find Death under an oak tree. There they find a pile of gold florins, nearly eight bushels, and forget Death entirely. Lots are drawn; the youngest goes to town for bread and wine while the other two plot to stab him and split the gold. The youngest buys poison from an apothecary — for rats and a polecat, he says — and puts it in two of three bottles of wine. When he returns, the two stab him. Celebrating, they drink the poisoned wine and die in agony beside their companion. 'Thus ended been these homicides two, and eke the false empoisoner also,' the Pardoner concludes.

• TThe NarratorAn observant pilgrim who joins the company at the Tabard Inn and sketches each traveller with deadpan irony — praising vice and virtue in the same breath.
• HHarry BaileyThe Host, who proposes the storytelling contest and holds the power of the free supper over every pilgrim's head.
• TThe KnightA worthy man who has fought at Alexandria and in Prussia, meek as a maid, whose noble romance of Palamon and Arcite opens the contest.
• TThe MillerA stout churl with a red beard and a wart with a tuft of hairs red as the bristles of a sow's ears, who plays the bagpipes, leads the company out of town, and answers the Knight with a cuckold's farce.
• TThe Wife of BathSomewhat deaf, bold-faced, five times married at the church door, she argues that experience beats authority and wins sovereignty over her fifth husband, Jankyn.
• TThe PardonerA shameless fraud who preaches against avarice to pocket pennies, then tells a tale in which greed kills three men under an oak tree.
• PPalamon and ArciteTheban knights of royal blood imprisoned by Theseus, whose sworn brotherhood collapses into rivalry over Emily — resolved only by a tournament and a fatal fall.
• NNicholas and AlisonThe scholar and the carpenter's young wife who stage a fake flood to sleep together, leaving old John with a broken arm and the neighbours laughing.

The brooch of the Prioress

'Amor vincit omnia' — Love conquers all — glitters on a woman who weeps for a mouse in a trap yet serves a God whose love she channels through nasal singing and Stratford-at-Bow French. The brooch is courtly romance bolted onto religious dress: sentiment worn as ornament, love as a fashion statement rather than a discipline.

The oak tree

The old man tells the rioters they will find Death under an oak tree, and they do — as nearly eight bushels of gold florins. The tree stands where Death and treasure are the same thing: the gold is the trap, the search for Death the search for fortune, and every man who reaches for one finds the other.

The book of wicked wives

Jankyn's nightly readings are male authority in physical form — pages compiled to condemn women. The Wife tears three leaves out and knocks him into the fire; he later burns the whole book and gives her the bridle entirely. The book's burning marks the exact moment authority yields to experience.

The kneading-tubs

Three tubs hung from the rafters, stocked with provisions and an axe, are Nicholas's fake flood — faith in a false prophecy made of rope and timber. John cuts his rope and crashes down, breaking his arm: the gullible believer falls furthest when the prophecy he trusted turns out to be a bedroom scheme.

The hot coulter

The red-hot iron Absolon fetches from the smithy turns a kiss into a brand. It is the farce's engine of revenge — desire humiliated at the window returns as fire on Nicholas's buttock — proof that in this world every joke collects its debt.

The Pardoner's closing line — 'Thus ended been these homicides two, and eke the false empoisoner also' — lands with a fraud's relish, and that relish is the point. A man who has just confessed he preaches for pennies, not souls, ends the sequence with a morality tale he plainly does not believe, and the gap between sermon and speaker is where the book leaves you. Read one way, the ending is a warning that greed executes itself: the rioters need no judge, only daggers and poisoned wine. Read another, the true subject is the teller — a Pardoner who profits from death's inevitability, selling relics against the very sin his tale enacts. It resonates because the whole collection has trained you to hear the gap between pilgrim and tale: the Knight's courtesy, the Miller's churlishness, the Wife's experience, the Pardoner's cupidity. The final irony is structural. Death, the privy thief no one can slay, is found exactly where the old man said — under the oak, wearing the face of gold — and the only pilgrims who escape ruin are the ones who surrender mastery: the knight to his hag, Jankyn to his wife. The book ends where it began, on the road, with the contest still running and the free supper still unclaimed.

1. 1.The Wife of Bath claims experience beats written authority — yet her prologue is a barrage of citations and her victory over Jankyn comes only when he burns his book. Does she defeat authority or become it?
2. 2.Compare the two marriage settlements: the hag who wins mastery by surrendering choice, and the Wife who wins the bridle by force and fraud. What does the book conclude about power freely given versus power seized?
3. 3.The Pardoner preaches 'Radix malorum est Cupiditas' while confessing he commits it. Is his tale a confession, a con, or both — and does the sin of the teller invalidate the truth of the tale?

GCSE English Literature students who need the set texts, and anyone who wants to hear the Middle Ages talk like people — vain, funny, greedy, and alive. If you like stories where the teller gives themselves away, start here.

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