By Dr Oliver Tearle ‘The Miller’s Tale’ is one of the most technically accomplished, and perhaps the funniest, of Geoffrey Chaucer’s completed Canterbury Tales. An example of a French literary form known as the fabliau, ‘The Miller’s Tale’ appears to have been Chaucer’s invention (many of the other tales told […]
The opening lines of the General Prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer’s great fourteenth-century literary work The Canterbury Tales is one of the most powerful and evocative poems about spring in all of English literature, from its first reference to the rejuvenating qualities of April showers through to the zodiacal allusions to […]
Ten of Chaucer’s greatest tales – selected by Dr Oliver Tearle Geoffrey Chaucer left his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, unfinished when he died in 1400, having completed only one-fifth of the projected undertaking. Nevertheless, he left 20-odd tales finished, some of which are somewhat longer than others. What are the […]