Priests, peasants, the plague, poverty, pardons and puns about poop.
Sex and thugs and fol-de-rol. I love Chaucer because he stands for something fundamentally wonderful: namely, that you can get much, much further with scholarship, wit, socio-political insight, beautifully-judged rhetorical figures and jokes about farting than you can with scholarship, wit, socio-political insight and beautifully-judged rhetorical figures alone.
Written in the 1380s, The Canterbury Tales uses a frame narrative (like Heart of Darkness- have a look at my post on that) to present a picture of a bunch of pilgrims from all walks of medieval life having a story-telling competition on their way to the tomb of Thomas Beckett in Canterbury. The pilgrims fuss, feud, fight, flirt, argue, interrupt, correct and engage in nauseating acts of social-climbing suck-uppery throughout their tales. It's rather more than a story made of stories: it's a story about why people tell stories, and the answer is that people tell stories because that's all that people ever do. It's what makes us human (well, that and having hair in odd places).
Don't be put off by the language: Chaucer wrote in Middle English and in rhyming couplets but you can get modern translations really easily- there are loads on the net (try http://www.librarius.com/cantales.htm) . And, if you're still not convinced, have a look at the accompanying video- it's Baba Brinkman, a rapper and medieval scholar, doing a version of the Pardoner's Tale, at Sawtry College as part of our Chaucer Day on October 17th. You can read more about Baba on http://www.babasword.com/or watch some of his videos here in The Library of Babble On: mouseclick the one below, which is from his visit to Sawtry, or the ones in the right sidebar.
Baba says the Pardoner reminds him of Kid Rock and his tale reminds him of Fifty Cent's first album, Get Rich Or Die Tryin'. I'm not nearly hip enough to argue, although for older readers I may as well mention that the Pardoner's Tale reminds me of The Treasure of Sierra Mardre, Reservoir Dogs and every movie Sergio Leone ever directed. The Miller's Tale, which Baba also performed for us, reminds me of the Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson TV show Bottom, but as it is ill-advised of me even to admit to awareness of such pop-culture vulgarity on an intellectual blog such as this I should probably just recommend that you read a bit of Chaucer and leave a comment if you liked his wonderfuly witty and sophisticated gags about blowing off in people's faces...
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