The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales absolutely deserves recognition for the major milestone it represents in the development and popularization of English-language literature, but viewed in the broader context of world literature, it wasn’t really a stand-out for me.

As far as story collections go, I thought The Arabian Nights had a much more interesting framing device, and The Decameron had stronger individual stories. What The Canterbury Tales does have going for it is all its fun rhyming couplets and the variety of its storytellers. We get to hear from working- and lower-class characters, whose perspectives seem to be rarely represented in available literature.

Unlike The Decameron, where a group of wealthy young people politely retreats together to tell stories, The Canterbury Tales feels more like a chaotic extended-family Thanksgiving gathering, where people from completely different walks of life take turns sharing controversial options and conflicting ideas about life, while regularly interrupting each other.

A surprising number of the stories are about the institution of marriage, with a lot of men complaining about their wives and talking about married life like it’s a cruel punishment of fate. By contrast, the Wife of Bath had by far the most fascinating perspective, openly challenging the double standards applied to men and women and arguing that there is no reason she shouldn’t be allowed to marry repeatedly after being widowed.

Book author: Geoffrey Chaucer