The document discusses Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and its historical context. It notes that Chaucer helped popularize the English language in literature during a time when the class system was breaking down and social mobility was increasing. The Canterbury Tales is seen as satirizing the flaws of the different pilgrim characters. The document also discusses the Ellesmere Manuscript, an early copy of the Tales that established the order of the stories that is still used today.

1. The Canterbury Tales and
the Ellesmere Manuscript
MATTHEW PFISTER

2. The Canterbury Tales in Relation to the
Time Period of its Creation
 The Class System of the time period was beginning to break down and more and
more people began to have the potential to be upwardly mobile.
 While Chaucer wasn’t the first to do it, it is widely agreed on that he was to one to
popularize the use of the English Language as a medium for written language in
literature

3. The Canterbury Tales in Relation to the
Tales Themselves
 Many assume that Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is a parody/satire for estates
literature, which consisted of an almost hostile takedown of a particular group of
people.
 Several of the pilgrims have negative flaws that are usually apparent throughout
the interludes of the Tales and especially within the personal Tale of each
individual pilgrim
 The tales themselves have a wide variety of characters from various backgrounds
and only one pilgrim out of the three estates seem to have minimal flaws while all
of the rest can be considered imperfect

4. The Canterbury Tales in Relation to
Geoffrey Chaucer
 Geoffrey Chaucer was a civil servant and member of the working nobility during
his life in England.
 Several people mislabel him as a middle-class man who worked his way up to an upper-
class lifestyle and attributing his rise to the potential for upward mobility of the time
period.
 Chaucer also inserted himself into the story as a character who is unaware of his
fellow pilgrims’ faults but who happens to speak of them with double entendres
that would be able to be understood by the more educated people who were
reading the Tales.

5. The Ellesmere Manuscript and its Significance
in Relation to the Canterbury Tales
 Most copies of the Canterbury Tales do not exist in complete states with no clear
order to the Tales. Most of this can be attributed to the fact that Chaucer never
finished his work on the Canterbury Tales.
 The Ellesmere Manuscript is a reproduction of the Canterbury Tales commissioned
to be written soon after Chaucer’s death and was written by the scribe Adam
Pinkhurst for who we assume was the noble who commissioned the Manuscript
 The order of the tales within the Ellesmere Manuscript has been used as the basis
for all future compilations of the Tales.

6. Bibliography
 Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. Dir. Chris Gormlie. Cromwell Productions, 1998. Film
 Horobin, Simon. “Thomas Hoccleve: Chaucer’s First Editor?”. Chaucer Review Volume 50 Issue 3/4.
2015. P. 228-250. Print
 Hales, John. “Chaucer”. The North American Review Volume 171 No. 528. November 1900. P. 712-
723. Print.
 Emmerson, Richard Kenneth. "Geoffrey Chaucer." Critical Survey of Poetry: British, Irish, &
Commonwealth Poets. Ed. Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman. Hackensack: Salem, 2011. n. pag. Salem
Online. Web. 28 Oct. 2015. <http://online.salempress.com>.
 Newlyn, Evelyn and Nelles, William. "Geoffrey Chaucer." Critical Survey of Short Fiction: British, Irish
& Commonwealth Writers. Ed. Charles E. May. Hackensack: Salem, 2012. n. pag. Salem Online.
Web. 28 Oct. 2015. <http://online.salempress.com>.