People in The Canterbury Tales are a group of 30 pilgrims who gather at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, London. They are traveling to St. Thomas à Becket’s shrine housed in the Cathedral in Canterbury for a religious pilgrimage.
Detailed answer:
In The Canterbury Tales, 29 pilgrims and the narrator make a religious pilgrimage. They travel to St. Thomas à Becket’s shrine housed in the Cathedral in Canterbury. The journey lasts four days and spans 60 miles.
In medieval practice, a pilgrimage was made to get God’s blessings and miracles as assiduous Christians. In the book, pilgrims have various personal reasons for traveling. Some of them go guided by a mentioned religious purpose. Others simply expect an adventure, a convivial experience, and entertainment. Moreover, pilgrims agree to participate in a storytelling contest during their journey. The price would be a dinner in the Tabard Inn.
In addition, Geoffrey Chaucer used a pilgrimage as a framing device. This allowed him to combine multiple literary genres into one work. All pilgrims in the book are people from different social classes. You can find the knight, monk, merchant, scholarly clerk, prioress, reeve, pardoner, and many others. The variety of social types allowed the author to create one of the most prominent pieces of English literature.
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