The Canterbury tales is a poem written by Geoffrey Chaucer who was a famous English poet and author. This poem is based on a city just outside London in a tavern in the year 1390. To visit the St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury, a group of pilgrims gather and prepare for their journey. Chaucer is one of the pilgrims among them.
The pilgrims go for dinner and at that time the host of the Tavern gives a proposal that all the pilgrims will two stories each while going and two stories each while coming back. He himself will be the judge and the person who tells the best story will win a free dinner at the tavern at the end of the journey. If anyone questions the judgement, will pay the bill for the entire pilgrimage. The pilgrims were excited and agreed to the host. The next morning the journey begins and with it begins tale telling.
After the first story ends, the host asks the monk to speak but the drunken miller interrupts, and announces that he will tell his story next or else he will leave. At some points of the game, drunken pilgrims, strangers, conflicts between the pilgrims spoil it during the journey. All the pilgrims have different types of stories to tell like comedies tragedies, romantics, dirty stories etc. Some pilgrims were telling stories where a character whose profession was similar to another pilgrims profession were insulted in the story. For example, the miller tells a story where a carpenter’s wife commits the sin of adultery and also humiliates him publicly. The carpenter among the pilgrims does not like it and tells a story whee the miller is insulted by the students. There were many such stories where where thew pilgrims were insulting each other and the host was trying to maintain between everyone during the game.
The game ends after twenty-four tales and we do not even get to see the pilgrims reach Canterbury. We do not even get to know who wins at the end. We only know that Canterbury tales end with the sermon of Parson.
