The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer famously left his Canterbury Tales unfinished; this volume, featuring five fifteenth-century Middle English texts, illustrates its enduring popularity and attempts to fill in its gaps. John Lydgate's Prologue to his Siege of Thebes imagines the author as a new pilgrim, a Benedictine monk, who comes to Canterbury to recover from illness, and is invited by Chaucer's Host to tell the first tale for the homeward journey. The Ploughman's Tale, capitalizing on the popularity of William Langland's Piers Plowman, offers an anti-Lollard perspective in a Miracle of the Virgin story. The Cook's Tale follows the fortunes of the dissolute apprentice, Perkyn Reveloure. The Spurious Links section lists numerous prologues inserted between tales to bridge narrative gaps. Finally, the Canterbury Interlude and Merchant's Tale of Beryn narrates the pilgrims' arrival at the shrine of St. Thomas, the Pardoner's fabliau misadventures with a cunning tavern hostess, and the story of a gambling merchant who encounters a series of legal troubles.