Cheshire Cats Classics Club

Our January selection is "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer.

The procession that crosses Chaucer's pages is as full of life and as
richly textured as a medieval tapestry. The Knight, the Miller, the
Friar, the Squire, the Prioress, the Wife of Bath, and others who make
up the cast of characters -- including Chaucer himself -- are real
people, with human emotions and weaknesses. When it is remembered that
Chaucer wrote in English at a time when Latin was the standard literary 
language across western Europe, the magnitude of his achievement is
even more remarkable. But Chaucer's genius needs no historical
introduction; it bursts forth from every page of The Canterbury Tales.

If we trust the General Prologue, Chaucer intended that each pilgrim
should tell two tales on the way to Canterbury and two tales on the way
back. He never finished his enormous project and even the completed
tales were not finally revised. Scholars are uncertain about the order
of the tales. As the printing press had yet to be invented when Chaucer
wrote his works, The Canterbury Tales has been passed down in several
handwritten manuscripts.