When analyzing The Canterbury Tales, many critics take issue with Geoffrey ChaucerÆs use of humor and his failure to seriously address the major ills of his day. ChaucerÆs references to the Black Death, the PeasantÆs revolt, and the labor disputes of the Flemish cloth makers are merely allusions in his bawdy, satirical tales, as ChaucerÆs characters are often irreverent yet insightful, telling their stories with frankness and candor. Due to the crudeness of ChaucerÆs comedy, critics are also quick to cite The Canterbury Tales for its historical irrelevance and lack of true social commentary. While these critiques are not entirely baseless, they are also rather hasty and unfair. Despite ChaucerÆs reliance on humor to tell his tales, his stories are also imbued with moral significance as well, and in his own subtle way, Chaucer provides social commentary that illuminates the upheaval and bleakness of his day in a way that even twenty-first century readers can understand.
The Canterbury Tales opens in springtime, as a group of travelers are making a pilgrimage to the shrine of the martyr Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury. It is suggested by the Host, Harry Bailey, that the pilgrims all travel together and share stories on both legs of the trip. Whoever the Host decides has told the best tale will earn a free meal at his tavern at the expense of the other pilgrims. The narrator of the tales, whose name is also Chaucer, gives a description of twenty-nine pilgrims, and the reader is introduced to a great cross-section of the type of people who inhabited ChaucerÆs medieval world.
ChaucerÆs aim in writing The Canterbury Tales was to deal with the individualÆs problems in a rapidly changing medieval world. Indeed, Chaucer gave voice and authority to characters whose questionable social status would normally leave powerless, as ôthe Canterbury Tales is a comedy that declares its difference from historical trage...