The Canterbury Tales

by Geoffrey Chaucer · 1400

A company of pilgrims riding to Canterbury trade tales bawdy, pious, and comic. Chaucer's founding masterpiece of English poetry.

Books mentioned in The Canterbury Tales (14)

• Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer: “which I revoke in my Retractions, as is the Book of Troilus, the Book also of Fame”
• Metamorphoses by Ovid: “(Witness of Ovid Metamorphoseos);”
• Inferno by Dante Alighieri: “Reade the greate poet of ltale, That Dante hight, for he can it devise”
• Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri: “That highte Dante, speak of this sentence:* *sentiment Lo, in such manner* rhyme is Dante's tale.”
• The Parliament of Fowls by Geoffrey Chaucer: “the Book of Saint Valentine's Day and of the Parliament of Birds, the Tales of Canter bury”
• Remedia Amoris by Ovid: “Ovid, in his book that called is the "Remedy of Love,"”
• Adversus Jovinianum by Jerome: “A cardinal, that highte Saint Jerome, That made a book against Jovinian,”
• Commentary on the Dream of Scipio by Macrobius: “Macrobius, that wrote the vision In Afric' of the worthy Scipion,”
• De Causa Dei by Thomas Bradwardine: “As can the holy doctor Augustine, Or Boece, or the bishop Bradwardine,”
• Liber Aureolus Theophrasti de Nuptiis by Theophrastus: “He call'd it Valerie,<28> and Theophrast, And with that book he laugh'd alway full fast.”
• Distichs of Cato: “Lo, Cato, which that was so wise a man, Said he not thus, *'Ne do no force of* dreams,'”
• Speculum Speculorum by Nigellus Wireker: “I have well read in Dan Burnel the Ass, <29> Among his verse, how that there was a cock”
• Rosarium Philosophorum by Arnaldus de Villanova: “Lo, thus saith Arnold of the newe town, <18> As his Rosary maketh mentioun,”
• De Raptu Proserpinae by Claudian: “(In Claudian ye may the story read, How in his grisly chariot he her fet*),”

Books that mention The Canterbury Tales (11)

• The History of Mr Polly by H. G. Wells: “He was stirred to read the Canterbury Tales, but he could not get on with Chaucer's old-fashioned English; it fatigued his attention, and he would have given all the story telling very readily for a few adventures on the road.”
• Kenilworth by Walter Scott: “And pave it all of silver and of gold. --THE CANON'S YEOMAN'S PROLOGUE, CANTERBURY TALES.”
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell: “Variant versions will be found in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 'The Tale of the Wyf of Bathe.'”
• 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff: “"Is there such a thing as a modern-English version of the Canterbury Tales?" A 1934 Longmans modernization by Hill, then a cheaper edition, are sent.”
• The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye by A. S. Byatt: “She had chosen to analyse the Clerk's Tale from The Canterbury Tales, which is the story of Patient Griselda.”
• How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom: “Shakespeare had been rereading Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale" from The Tales ofCanterbury, so as to borrow freely from Chaucer for his plot.”
• Quichotte by Salman Rushdie: “He would be—to quote Chaucer's Canterbury Tales —her verray, parfit, gentil knyght.”
• The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell: “A minnow of déjà vu darts by and its name is Geoffrey Chaucer: "Now, Sirs," quoth he, "if it be you so lief To finde Death, turn up this crooked way, For in that grove I left him, by my fay, Under a tree, and there he will abide …" (low confidence: no title stated, but the verbatim quoted lines are recognizably from the Pardoner's Tale,…”
• Stoner by John Williams: “he finished his course work for the Master of Arts degree in the spring of 1915 and spent the summer completing his thesis, a prosodic study of one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales”
• Everyman by Philip Roth: “reciting from memory for him, unostentatiously and in flawless Middle English, the prologue to The Canterbury Tales”
• The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton: “their symptoms are well expressed by Sir Geoffrey Chaucer in his first Canterbury Tale.”