It is a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century.

Chaucer began the

tales in 1387 and continued until his death in 1400. In The Canterbury Tales, a group of pilgrims
traveling to Canterbury Cathedral compete in a storytelling contest. This overarching plot, or
frame, provides a reason for the pilgrims to tell their stories, which reflect the concerns sparked
by the social upheavals of late medieval England.

Humor:

A good sense of humor is one of the essential skills of any great writer . Chaucer is one of the first
English short story-teller and the greatest humorists in English literature. He is one of those
artists who exerts a puzzling amount and variety of humor, and wields it in a remarkably subtle
manner.

In “The Prologue toe the Canterbury Tales”, humor is all-pervasive. Humor in

the Prologue appears chiefly in the shape of irony and satire, though we do have some
examples of pure humor which means fun and laughter for their own sake. Chaucer is
perpetually showing the humorous side, not merely of his emotions but his interests, his
knowledge, his beliefs, his everything.

The Prologue offers plentiful illustrations of Chaucer’s sense of humour. His characterization of

almost all the characters is, indeed humorous. It has at the same time to be pointed out that
Chaucer’s humour is mostly ironical and satirical. For example, we laugh at the Squire’s love-
insomnia, the leanness of the Clerk of Oxford and of his horse which is compared to a rake. In
Chaucer’s treatment of characters, satire has generally a corrective motive.

The purpose of humor in Chaucer's poem is not to hurt others, but just to illuminate and illustrate just
what they are. It is said that Chaucer's humor is gentle because he has a deep affection for
humanity.

Thus we find that humor including irony and satire is the most conspicuous ingredient in
Chaucer's characterization of the pilgrims in the Prologue. Chaucer's humor lends a most
distinctive quality to his character-sketches.

Style:

The style of The Canterbury Tales is characterized by rhyming couplets. That means that every
two lines rhyme with each other. It's also in iambic pentameter (the same style as
Shakespeare), meaning that in each line there are ten syllables, and a heavily emphasized
(stressed) syllable follows a less emphasized (unstressed) syllable: [dah DAH] [dah DAH] [da
DAH] [da DAH] [da DAH]. Each [da DAH] is an iamb, and there are five of them per line.

Chaucer's poetic style can be a little bit difficult because, a lot of the time, he twists his
sentences around. As English-speakers, we're used to hearing the subject come first in the
sentence, followed by the verb. But Chaucer will often do the opposite. Take the line "Than
longen folk to goon on pilgrimages" (General Prologue 12). The subject, "folk," comes after the
verb, "longen." Chaucer does this a lot, meaning that sometimes you have to wait until you get
to the end of a line before you can really understand what's happening in the sentence. The
reason for it is to help him keep his couplets rhyming, but darn does it make the Tales hard to
read sometimes!