The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales begins by evoking the spring:

When in April the sweet showers fall/And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all/The veins are bathed in liquor of such power/As brings about the engendering of the flower... (3).

In the fertile spring, when flowers begin to show and birds sing, the people of England start thinking of going on religious pilgrimages—especially to Canterbury Cathedral, the site of St. Thomas Becket’s healing shrine.

Our narrator says he once set out on just this journey, starting from an inn in London called the Tabard. There, he met 29 other pilgrims, and they all got along so well, they decided to travel together. He introduces these characters one by one in the subsequent tales.

The first is the chivalrous Knight, a crusader who has just returned home from lengthy foreign travels. For all his adventures, he remains quiet, modest, and gentlemanly, wearing clothes still smudged by his armor. His son, the Squire, is a talented, energetic, lovelorn young man, who devotes all his skill to impressing his lady love. With them travels the Yeoman, a Robin-Hood-like woodsman, skilled in all forest craft and carrying a quiver of peacock-feathered arrows.