The Canterbury Tales: Chaucer's England on the Road

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the world Geoffrey Chaucer captured in The Canterbury Tales — the pilgrims, the roads, and the society they rode through. They discuss the Tabard Inn, the shrine of Thomas Becket, and the pilgrimage route to Canterbury. They dig into the tales themselves: the Knight's chivalric romance, the Miller's bawdy fabliau, the Wife of Bath's bold prologue, and the Pardoner's cynical confession. They look at how Chaucer drew from Boccaccio's Decameron and French courtly romance, and how his English — the London dialect of the late fourteenth century — helped shape the literary language. They also talk about the real roads, the pilgrim traffic, the inns, and the dangers and delights of the journey. Along the way, they touch on the social tensions of the time: the rise of the middle class, the corruption of the church, and the stirrings of a new sense of English identity after the Black Death. The episode ends with a quiet reflection on what Chaucer's unfinished masterpiece still says about the human comedy. #GeoffreyChaucer #CanterburyTales #Pilgrimage #MiddleEnglish #TabardInn #ThomasBecket #WifeOfBath #KnightTale #MillerTale #PardonerTale #Boccaccio #London #14thCentury #MedievalEngland #EnglishLiterature #History #FexingoHistory #Podcast Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo