The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a collection of stories told by a group of pilgrims who compete in a story-telling contest for a prize of a free dinner as they journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas a Becket in Canterbury.  The tales, which are told in both prose and poetry, are earthy, candid, comic and ironic, and often cast English society and the Anglican Church in a critical light. The structure of the work resembles The Decameron of Boccaccio, which Chaucer, a courtier and diplomat as well as an author, is likely to have read.  The Canterbury Tales appeared at the end of the 14th Century and is considered the first important literary work written in Middle English, the language of the people, and became the base for the use of English in those great works that might otherwise have been written in Latin for the ever-dwindling audience who spoke, wrote and read that dying language.   Chaucer produced a long list of notable works, but The Canterbury Tales stand as his magnum opus and that sealed his reputation as England’s first great poet.

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