The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a collection of 24 tales framed as a story-telling competition between fellow travelers on their way to visit the grave of Saint Thomas Beckett at Canterbury Cathedral. Chaucer includes a wide array of characters from different classes and professions in The Canterbury Tales which creates a critical, ironic, and often humorous portrait of English society at the time. Additionally, rather than writing in the traditional literary language of Latin, Chaucer helped popularize the use of the English vernacular by composing his tales in the Middle English spoken at the time. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a foundational work in English poetry which every student should read.
