Chaucer begins the Canterbury Tales

1386

Geoffrey Chaucer, a London customs official with continental literary tastes, started writing a frame-story of pilgrims riding from Southwark to Becket's shrine at Canterbury. He let each character speak in his or her own voice in iambic pentameter Middle English, from the noble Knight to the bawdy Wife of Bath. The vernacular found a poet equal to Boccaccio.