The General Prologue and the Marketplace of Ideas

Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

In this course, Dr Marion Turner (University of Oxford) provides an introduction to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The course begins with a discussion of the opening lines of the General Prologue, before going on to discuss Chaucer himself, the so-called 'Father of English Poetry'. In the third module, we look at the Miller's Tale and its status as a "literary Peasants' Revolt", before going to discuss the idea of places and spaces in the Merchant's Tale. The fifth and sixth modules focus on The Wife of Bath's Tale; in the first, we consider the concept of gender and authority in the Tale, while in the second, we look at how Chaucer adapts the popular "Loathly Lady" story pattern in the Tale.

The General Prologue and the Marketplace of Ideas

In this module, we discuss how the opening lines of the General Prologue represent Chaucer's work more generally and the world in which he lived. In particular, we see how the first lines of the Prologue takes the reader from the unchanging natural world, the world of feudalism, to a busy pub in South London, bustling with members of London's emerging middle classes. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, it is argued, represents this new world, a world of social mobility and activity, where traditional social hierachies are called in question, and where different perspectives are given equal claims to authority - a "marketplace of ideas"