he Parliament of Fowls, and The Legend of Good Women, but he was unable to finish them. They were ambitious yet timid tentatives, frank imitations, in theme and form, of continental origins.
Probably in 1387 he began the Canterbury Tales. It was a brilliant scheme--to join a varied group of Britons at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, ride with them on their vacation pilgrimage to the shrine of Becket at Canterbury, and put into their mouths the tales and thoughts that had gathered in the traveled poet's head for half a century (Prose 26). Such devices for stitching stories together had been used many times before, but this was the best of all. Boccaccio had assembled for his Decameron only one class of men and women; he had not made them stand out as diverse personalities. Chaucer created an inn full of characters so heterogeneously real that they seem truer to English life than the stuffed figures of history. They live and literally move, they love and hate, laugh and cry; and as they jog along the road we hear not merely the tales they tell but their own troubles, quarrels and philosophies.
There was the Merchant, and a Man of Laws, a Carpenter, a Weaver, a Dyer, a Cook and a Shipman. And there was Chaucer himself, standing aside, "fat and difficult to embrace," and looking forever upon the ground as if to find a hare." And not least was the host, the owner of the Tabard Inn, who vows he has never entertained so merry a company. Indeed, he offers to go with them and be th
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