MODEL+-+The+Canterbury+Tales

media type="custom" key="14087818" Professor Clarke is going to talk about the Canterbury Tales.

//**The Canterbury Tales**// is a book of stories written by **Geoffrey Chaucer** in the **14th century**. This is an important book, because it is one of the **first** to be written in the **English language**. The book is about a group of travellers who are going **from London to Canterbury**. As they travel along, each person tells a tale (a story), thus making up the text of The Canterbury Tales. Some of the stories are **serious ** and others are funny. Some of the funny stories are vulgar. A lot of the tales talk about the Christian faith.



The travellers in the book are **pilgrims**. They are travelling on a journey to an important religious site. In the Middle Ages, many Christian people went on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela and Canterbury. Canterbury Cathedral was a famous pilgrimage site because it contained the shrine (a place for remembering) of Saint Thomas Becket.

A reason why pilgrims used to gather in groups was that it was **dangerous** to travel alone. In the days before modern banking, every traveller had to carry a lot of money to pay for food and accommodation (a place to sleep). Robbers often attacked people along the roads. (From "The Canterbury Tales." //Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)// media type="custom" key="18926008"