On a money-spinning pilgrimage to Canterbury, a Pardoner says the quiet part out loud.
Pardoners, in pre-Reformation England, raised funds for the Pope by selling Indulgences, blessings that relieved sinners of some of the punishment they could expect to undergo in Purgatory after death. Naturally a Pardoner attached himself to the pilgrims walking to Canterbury, and he was refreshingly open about his profitable game.
An Arthurian knight commits a dreadful crime against a woman, and is sent by Queen Guinevere on a fitting errand.
Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’ include a story told by a much-married lady from Bath named Alison. She prefaces it by complaining at great length that she has been made to feel guilty for marrying five times, and still more so for demanding some equality in the home. Yet, she says, sometimes that works out rather well.
Two noble youths of ancient Thebes fall for the same princess.
Chaucer’s twenty-four ‘Canterbury Tales’, told by pilgrims travelling from London to the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury in the late 14th century, open with the Knight’s Tale. A curious blend of Norman chivalry and classical mythology, it reminds us that any civilisation worthy of the name is firmly founded on Greco-Roman culture.