ENGLISH 45A Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Canterbury Cathedral, Geoffrey Chaucer
Document Summary
English 45a lecture 2 the canterbury tales prologue geoffrey chaucer. People feel to desire to go on a pilgrimage during spring. Narrator prepared to go on a pilgrimage to see st. thomas becket"s relics in canterbury. 29 pilgrims, also traveling to canterbury, entered the inn the narrator was staying at. Narrator is accepted by the group and ready to join them. First person narrative, determined by line 20 i . Changes to first person plural we by line 29. He becomes a member of the group. Narrator spends a long time describing the wonder of spring. Gives the opening lines a surreal quality. Dreaminess of spring does not fully align with the seriousness of pilgrimage, which is a journey taken for penance. Narrator is remembering events as they occurred many years afterwards he has tyme and space . Descriptions of pilgrims are subjective to both his memory and his individual biases.
