1 - The Form of the Canterbury Tales

Summary

This chapter explores the varying meanings and importance of form in the Canterbury Tales. Overall, the focus is on Chaucer’s understanding of form as integral to interpretation. The opening section contextualizes Chaucer’s approach to form within later medieval poetics, contrasting ideas of formal perfection and imperfection in the work of Dante and the Pearl-poet with Chaucer’s responsive and unpredictable forms. The Canterbury Tales is compared with tale-collections by Gower and Boccaccio, and with Chaucer’s other tale-collections – the ‘Monk’s Tale’ and the Legend of Good Women. The chapter explores the interplay and juxtaposition of forms both across the Tales, and within an individual tale (The Nun’s Priest’s Tale). Moving to a micro-level, it analyses one specific form – rhyme royal – by close-reading several stanzas from The Man of Law’s Tale. Finally it argues that Chaucer problematizes the conventional allegorical idea of seeing through form to reach meaning, suggesting instead that form and content cannot be divided. Meaning is inherent in Chaucer’s complex, kinetic, and, above all, multiple forms.