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• Canterbury Tales, The
  Canterbury Tales, The

  noun

  an uncompleted sequence of tales by Chaucer, written for the most part after 1387.
• The Canterbury Tales
  The Canterbury Tales

  A work written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the late fourteenth century about a group of pilgrims, of many different occupations and personalities, who meet at an inn near London as they are setting out for Canterbury, England. Their host proposes a storytelling contest to make the journey more interesting.

Canterbury Tales, The

American  

noun

1. an uncompleted sequence of tales by Chaucer, written for the most part after 1387.

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The Canterbury Tales Cultural  

1. A work written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the late fourteenth century about a group of pilgrims, of many different occupations and personalities, who meet at an inn near London as they are setting out for Canterbury, England. Their host proposes a storytelling contest to make the journey more interesting.

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The tales, which are almost all in rhyme, have many different styles, reflecting the great diversity of the pilgrims; some are notoriously bawdy. The language of The Canterbury Tales is Middle English.

Some of the more famous stories are “The Knight's Tale,” “The Miller's Tale,” and “The Wife of Bath's Tale.”

Example Sentences

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The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of 24 stories told by a group of pilgrims during their journey from London to Canterbury Cathedral.

From BBC ● Nov. 16, 2021

In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses the Manciple’s Tale to preach the dangers of “jangling,” a term that encompassed most pointless chatter:

From Slate ● Feb. 25, 2016

Fart jokes earn a place in the opening scene of Aristophanes’ The Clouds and the memorable closing scene of “The Miller’s Tale” in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.

From Salon ● Aug. 23, 2012

Morte d'Arthur Having adapted The Canterbury Tales for the RSC, the writer-director team of Mike Poulton and Gregory Doran now give us a compressed version of Malory's epic on Arthurian legend.

From The Guardian ● May 23, 2010

I pulled The Canterbury Tales from my locker and dropped it in my backpack.

From "The Boy in the Black Suit" by Jason Reynolds