The Canterbury Tales: Modern English

A group of Medieval pilgrims, crossing a Medieval English landscape, is bound for Canterbury. Their journey is one of penitence and piousness, and they seek the chance to demonstrate their faith in the most holy of places. Along the way, they each tell stories to pass the time. So goes the premise of one of the greatest and most enduring works of literature in the history of the English language — Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.

The Knight's Tale, The Miller's Tale, The Wife of Bath's Tale — so much of Chaucer's masterwork has passed into the very bedrock of poetic tradition that he is perhaps second only to Shakespeare in the pantheon of Late Middle Age/Early Modern literature. The great author was born sometime in the 1340s and died in October 1400. His career was a varied and celebrated one, and he excelled in his scientific and political endeavors as well as in his literary ones. Of course, it is these literary achievements for which Chaucer is best known, and none of his works have enjoyed such lasting appeal as The Canterbury Tales.