Summary of the Canterbury TalesThe Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories set within the plot of a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral, the shrine of St Thomas à Becket. The poet joins a group of pilgrims, vividly described in the General Prologue, who gather at the Tabard Inn outside London for the journey to Canterbury. Ranging in status from knight to humble peasant, they are a microcosm of 14th century English society. The host offers a storytelling contest to pass the time; each of the approximately 30 pilgrims (the exact number is unclear) must tell four stories during the round trip. Chaucer completed less than a quarter of this plan. The work contains 22 stories in verse (two unfinished) and two long stories in prose; some are thought to be pieces previously written by Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales, consisting of more than 18,000 lines of poetry, consist of separate blocks of one or more tales with links that introduce and join the stories within a block. The tales best represent almost every variety of medieval history. The Special Genius The essence of Chaucer's work, however, lies in the dramatic interplay between the tales and the plot of the plot. After the Knight's courtly, philosophical romance about noble love, the Miller interrupts with a delightfully bawdy tale of seduction aimed at the Reeve (an officer or steward of a manor); the Reeve takes revenge by recounting the seduction of a miller's wife and daughter. Thus, the stories develop the personalities, arguments and different opinions of their narrators. After the Knight's tale, the Miller, who was so drunk that he could barely sit on his horse, began to shout: "I know a story that can cover the Knight's opinion." story out!" "But first, said the Miller, "I admit that I am drunk; I know it from my voice. And therefore if I speak as I ought not, blame it on the beer, I pray you; for I will tell the life and legend of a carpenter and his wife, and how a clerk manipulated them. that he had studied the liberal arts, but all his joy was directed at astrology. He knew how to solve certain problems, for example, if men asked him at certain celestial hours when there would be drought or rain, he could answer correctly The clerk was called Nicholas... half of the paper... carpenter The Reeve replied that the drunken Miller would have to break his neck 'English as a literary language and extended it. the range of its poetic vocabulary and metres. He was the first English poet to use iambic pentameter, the seven-line stanza called royal rhyme, and the couplet later called heroic system of versification, which depends on the sound of many and ultimately silent (or absent) syllables in modern English ceased to be understood in the 15th century. However, Chaucer dominated the works of his 15th-century English followers and the so-called Scottish Chaucerians. For the Renaissance he was the English Homer. EdmundSpenser paid him homage as his master; many of William Shakespeare's works show a complete assimilation of Chaucer's comic spirit. John Dryden, who modernized many of the Canterbury Tales, called Chaucer the father of English poetry. Since the founding of the Chaucer Society in England in 1868, which led to the first reliable editions of his works, Chaucer's reputation has been firmly established as the best-loved English poet after Shakespeare for his wisdom, humor and humanity..