The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343? – 1400), known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. The Canterbury Tales was Chaucer's masterpiece, which did much to legitimize English as the major literary language at a time when French and Latin were dominant. He uses the tales and the descriptions of its characters to paint an ironic and critical portrait of English society at the time, and particularly of corruption in the Church.