today we will learn about the Canterbury Tales which was written by chrey choser and it was written between 1387 and 1400 and it has 177,000 lines you don't have to read the actual text because it's written in Middle English and as you know that it's difficult to read Middle English yes of course you can read the work but you need to translate the Middle English to Modern English then only you will be able to understand this work so the book is very important because it is one of the first books made works you can say is written in English language and not in Latin language as you know that Anglo Norman period French language used to be the language of upper class Society whereas the churches and Scholars used to speak in Latin language and English was often seen as the language of common people uh for it is not for the serious literature but then by Cha's time the French language started declining and many Nobles Common Man other writers like John go the Pearl poet William langland were also creating sophisticated literary Works in English so choser was not revolutionary for choosing to write in English and this was already happening choser real importance comes from how he used the English writing in his work he showed that English could be used for many different types of stories and styles Cher's main audience was educated people at the court okay who could read and who can understand understand French and Latin language he was not writing it for the common people who only knew English but he's writing for an educated audience who are mostly upper class middle class so his audience was well educated class because it is only the well educated class who would appreciate his clever use of language and literary references so other works in English when we talk about early English literature we need to understand that there was Old English yes B wolf was written in Old English we have Middle English there were already a lot of other works that are important in Middle English for example sir gain and the Green Knight William langland Pierce diplom man instead it's special because choser used Middle English to tell many different kinds of stories from serious religious Tales uh to funny things he told about a lot of things he took a lot of topics of everyday life so he wrote about all the levels of society and showcase that English could be used for both High literary art and common entertainment but before begin this video you can join our ongoing batch on all these competitive exams in English literature here are some reviews from the students that will help you make the decision I have qualified grf this time because of Neal gr are only without his notes it was impossible for me to crack such a big exam without you it was was impossible for me to crack the net exam I have qualified my ugc net in my first attempt he also act like a guardian as well as a mentor in every difficult path he's always available whenever we need him my immense thanks to nul Gras and Limitless literature it is very helpful and easy to understand he supported me a lot I would definitely recommend Limitless literature to all the net aspirants out there Limitless literature with Limitless guidance if you want to crack ugc with JF in English literature I highly recommend you to join with Limitless literature and now without any further Ado let's continue with this discussion the canary tale story starts at a place called The tabard Inn in South for London at this in 30 people meet they are all going on a journey to Canterbury to visit a church where it has the shrine of St Thomas bead Thomas bead was an important religious figure who was killed in the can Cathedral okay so pilgrimage what is pilgrimage just like we have vno ma the same way and the Christians also has the pilgrimage of Thomas Becket Thomas Becket was the Archbishop of Canterbury and he was killed by King Henry 2 so King Henry 2 was so much frustrated because of Thomas Beckett's religious ideas so he had to kill Thomas Beckett in Canterbury Cathedral so that's why this Canterbury Cathedral became an important pilgrimage site for Christian world and pilgrims believe that you will get heal you your disease will get healed so uh that's why it is an important work and that's why all the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales are traveling to Canterbury to visit the shrine of St Thomas Becket we have the work Mur in Cathedral by TS eliott which retells the story of Thomas packet that how he was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral okay it is a part of modernism we will study in the age of modernism all right so let's come back to Canterbury Tales we have 30 pilgrims who all are going on a journey to Canterbury to visit a church they are gathered around in an in in his sort of restaurant okay the the host of that you can say the owner of that restaurant is Harry belly he comes up with a plan he tells the traveler they should tell stories during their Journey each person will tell two stories on the way to Canterbury two stories on the back so total four stories each of the 30 pilgrims will share 4 into 30 equals to 120 total 120 stories 120 tales that all the pilgrims combined will recite after returning to the Canterbury okay so whoever tells the best story will get a free dinner at the tabard in when they return everyone else will have to pay for this dinner and the people in this story came from all different parts of society this is important because it shows us the Society of the medieval period medieval England we meet Knights priests Merchants workers and many others the book has two main parts General prologue introduces all the characters and the second one is the tales themselves the original plan was to write 120 Tales but choser was never able to finish this he only was able to finish 24 Tales out of 120 Tales but uh these all Tales are important we are only going to figure out the important ones that you have to study for the competitive exams uh the rest of the things you will be getting into the PDF format after this lecture so let's start with the first Tale the Knight's Tale here we have the character the Knight who will tell his first story to us okay the night's tale is very simple to understand so this is a love story with two young men and one beautiful woman so two friends palaman and aride are in jail in Athens their jail has a window that looks out at a garden one morning what happens is that they both looked out of the jail and they saw a beautiful young woman named Emily walking in the garden both men fall in love with the Emily right away and this caused trouble in their friendship and they both want to marry her and now what happens is that they both are in the jail and a friend of arite request the Duke of that time to release arite on a request this way aside goes out of the jail but there was a promise that he should never return to Athens forever he should never return but then ourside loves Emily so he disguised himself and started doing a job near her house you can say all right whereas we have palaman who was in the jail who later breaks out of the jail and ran away now one day what happens was that these two men meet in the woods and they meet in the forest and they started fighting over Emily so when they fighting um suddenly the ruler of Athens Theus finds them fighting instead of punishing them he comes up with a plan he says that let's have a big fight with so many warriors you both must have a team you both fight with each other and whoever wins will get the chance to marry Emily so now before the fight what happens is that prel prays to Winners to help him marry Emily whereas our side prays to Mars to help him win the battle now say has to solve the problem of both Venus as well as Mars our side prays that he wants to win the battle so Satan helps him win the battle but then palon says that he wants to marry Emily he does not pray that he wants to win the battle but he says that he wants to marry Emily so Satan listened to our site and helped him win the battle whereas what he do is he creates an accident where arite falls off his horse and gets injured even though arite won the battle but he is injured now so arite before dying he says to palamon that you should go and marry Emily so in the end palamon and Emily got married and started living happily so there's a simple message love can make friends become enemies life isn't always Fair sometimes bad luck change everything and in the end things work out but not always how we plan this is the tale told by night so this deals with the theme of Honor love Fai and all those things and it includes the elements of both tragedy as well as romance first let's understand why this tale is important after the night's tale uh Knight told a very serious Tale But then we have the drunken Miller Miller was very drunk and he rudely interrupts the host wanted the most monk to tell the story but this drunken Miller rudely interrupt no monk will not tell the story I will tell you the story so that's also competitive examination question point of view that who interrupted the monk so it's Miller who interrupted him and he started his own story so this also shows how the Miller is so disrespectful of social order okay so the Miller Story is about uh the main characters John an old carpainter who is married to a young pretty wife Alison Nicholas a clever student who rents a room in Jon's house absolon a Parish Clerk Church worker now John and Alison both are husband and wife but Nicholas wants to sleep with Alison so these characters Nicholas and absolon creates a plan Nicholas was very clever and he wants to sleep with her his wife okay alisen so he goes to the John the husband John he goes to the John he tells to John the flood is coming into the town and he takes the example of Bible that the flood is coming in the town the same flood that you have read in Noah's story in the Bible so Johan gets very fearful John says that I don't want to die I want to save myself I want to save my wife so now Nicholas tricked him Nicholas said that we will take you up to the roof and we will make you sit in a tub on around the ceiling ceiling if the water comes in the room then you can cut this if we tie ourselves from the roof and if the flood comes we will not die our tub will save us we will flood in the tub and the old carpainter the Chan gets angry and he hangs himself from the roof in a tub and now while he is waiting for the flood to come all night he is sitting in the tub Nicholas find an opportunity and he seduced Alison and they both made the love whole night and that's how the old carpainter was fooled write down some important points Nicholas is clever but dishonest the story makes fun of John for being old and foolish that also reflects that medal people enjoyed stories about clever young man tricking old husbands now what happens here is that on listening to The Miller's story reev gets offended the reev used to be a carpainter and now he is very angry about the Miller's story that made fun of carpainter as you know that uh John was the carpainter in Miller's tale so to take the Revenge the reev tells the story on Miller so now he tells on story where there was a Miller named simkin who was not an honest man he would steal floor from his customers the customers who comes to him and purchases ATA floor he gives them less floor so everyone was so much like frustrated from this Miller now here we have the two students who came up with the plan two students John and alen knows that Miller steals the floor to stop the Miller the two students went to Miller's shop on a horse okay and the students brought uh their grains ATA kanak you can say kanak and says piso we are looking at you let us see how you make floor out of the cranes you don't fool us but the Miller was tricky while the students were looking somewhere else Miller goes behind the students and untie the horse on which they have came so the horse started running in the farms and these two students got so much afraid so these two students started running behind the horse and while the students are running behind the horse the Miller trick them or the Miller stole some of the floor and now when the students came back to the shop it was very late at night so Miller thought it's too late at night so these students where these students will go you two students stay in our house for tonight and tomorrow morning you can leave so these two students found an opportunity to disgrace The Miller's wife and The Miller's daughter now at night everyone had to sleep in the same room the Miller his wife their daughter and the two students there are total five people who are there so the students are very angry about the stolen floor they decided to take the Revenge at night and at night what happened was alen went into the the bed of Miller's daughter whereas John went into the bed of Miller's wife it was dark Miller's wife got very upset she stood up she went into the bathroom and when she came back from the bathroom she had a stick in her hand but then it was dark and by mistake she went into the husband's bed and when her husband moved she thought he was the student who is trying to sleep with her she got very angry and hid him hard on the head with a stick she had no idea that she was hitting her husband and all this led to a big fight in the dark and during all this confusion the two students ran away they took back all the floor that the Miller has stolen and the Miller had a very very bad night his wife hit him by mistake and the students got their Revenge so that's the story of the re next we have the cooks tail remember that the host of all the pilgrims was Harry belly and we came to know about his name Harry belly in this tale still know we do not know the name that Harry belly is the host in The Cook's Tale the name gets revealed so it can be asked in the competitive exam that in which Tale the name of the Harry belly the name of the host reveals so it is a taale of cook the cook who hears the Reeves funny story and says I have a funny story too and this story is about a young man named Perkin Perkin loves to party all the time Perkin dances a lot and he drinks too much Perkin's boss is always upset with Perkin that Perkin is not doing any work he's setting a bad example for other workers so Perkin's boss fired him from the job okay and then what happens was Perkins meets a friend and they both start drinking and gambling choser never finished writing this story we don't know what happened next this taale is one of the shortest in the Canterbury Tale But it tells about the people of that period of time the young people who are so lazy who didn't want to work who don't take their work seriously how they used to drink how they used to gamble so that's what reflected in the medieval England by looking at this cooking Cooks taale we come to know about how the young people used to look like in the medal period [Music] let's meet the wife of bath she's one of the most interesting people in the canterbary tales her name is Alison and she has been married five times she's a successful business woman who makes clothes and wear expensive red cloths she's Deaf from one year we will discuss how she got deaf uh for now remember that she is deaf from one year and she's sort of feminist she's very common Confident Woman uh she likes to share her strong opinions about marriage about women's right so she tells everyone that it's fine to marry many times even though some religious people will disagree but it's fine you can marry as many times as you want it's your choice so she is also married five times the first three husbands were old and Rich fourth husband was unfaithful to her the fifth husband Jenkin who was young and her favorite he was a former student who would read from a book about Wicked wives the fifth husband Jenkin she loved Jenkin even though he sometimes treated her badly but she loves her so much so she strongly believes that wives should control um the marriage okay let's discuss her relation with her fifth husband Jenkin and uh then we will talk about the tale of the wife of bath so uh the wife of bath was was Deaf from one year actually what happened was Jenkin loves reading books and every night he would tell her a story from the book of wicked wives this book has a lot of stories about wives how bad the wives are to their husband so he used to read it aloud telling her that wives are like this wives are like this and one night she got so angry that she tore the three pages of jenkin's book and this made him mad he hid her her hard so hard on her ears that she fell on the floor and she got Deaf from one ear and after that Jenkin felt very sorry because he was in the rage he was in the anger so he burned the book The Wicked wives the book he has been reading for so long every night he burned that book and he felt sorry he said he's not going to disturb her from the next time he is very sorry for what he has done right now and so she became deaf but then she uh forgives him and both of them started living together very happily afterwards she's also a pilgrim in canbury Tales and now let's discuss her story which is about uh the time when King Arthur used to live so there was a night in the Kingdom of King Arthur so this Knight does something very bad to a woman this Knight attacked the young woman so Arthur is very angry with the Knight and he said I will execute you but the queen interrupts and she tells that I will save you on one condition if you find out the answer to a question what women want most in life if he gets the right answer he can live the Knight said wow that's so easy he's very confident that he will surely find the answer of this and in fact he has been given one whole year to find the answer so the night travels everywhere asking women that what the woman wants the most so he gets different different answers from all the womens but then he got very afraid he's not going to get any answer and then he walks to an old lady old lady says that I will tell you what the women wants most but I will tell you on one condition you have to marry me if I give you the answer to this question you have to marry me so the Knight gots afraid he is disheartened also but then he has to save his life he said okay old woman if you tell me the answer of this particular question what the women want the most in their life if the answer is right I will marry you the old woman said all right then the answer to this question is women wants to make their own decisions by themselves and and she wants the control over their husbands so these two things women wants the most and the Knight goes to the queen and tells the answer to the queen and this answer saved his life but now he must keep his promise the old woman asked the Knight to marry her the Knight is very shocked he is very unhappy because she is old and ugly but then he he had no choice he had to keep the promise to marry her and the old woman gives him a chance she will give him two choices that she can stay ugly and be a faithful wife or she can become beautiful but maybe Unfaithful but night now have understood that woman wants to make their own decisions by themselves so Knight said you choose whatever you want to become because that's what uh a woman loves so she makes the choices she becomes both beautiful and faithful so the lesson learned is that the women should be allowed to make their own decisions and hence the story teaches us that when men gives the women what they really want is to give the right to make their own choices both men and women can live happily so this was a very modern idea in Cher's time when women usually had very little power in marriage so that's what that's why the wife of B tale is very important it has very modern ideas that still we can relate of course the wife of Bale is also about the women wants to control their husbands so two things we can reduce from here a partner is someone who works for the church and Sol forgiveness for sin okay so partner means to Pardon to give pardon so people would come to partner in the church and tell about their sins what they have done and people get the pardon from the partner so that's a sort of messenger between the people and the God okay so now many partner misuse these positions in the church so this partner in the Canterbury tale is one of the most dishonest characters in the story he has long yellow hair no beard and High squeaky voice he carries fake hly items that he sells to people like old bones he says are from Saints or pieces of cloth he claims are from Jesus cloths what makes the partner very interesting is that he openly says that he tricks people he does not hide anything he he openly says that I trick people he's very hypocrite he says that I go to the town and I preach people about that GRE is evil greed is bad you should not be very greedy but he himself is very greedy he admits it he openly says that I take money from the people he knows what he is doing is wrong but he doesn't care so this tale tells everyone in the canterbary tales now he tells a story about three young men who are looking for death because they want to kill him old man tells them they can find Death under a specific tree now when these three men young men go to the tree to find the death they do not find the death over there they instead find the gold coins and now these three men started fighting who will get the gold coins and they stab each other and all the three gets died that's the moral of the lesson that you should not be very greedy and he tells the tale to everyone who were there in the Canterbury Tales all the characters he says that you should not be greedy he should not be greedy he tells everyone and it makes everyone so angry even he says that the most sinful person on this Earth is the host Harry belly this makes the host extremely angry the host responds with a very harsh word he says he would like to cut off the partner's private parts and they both get into a fight so the partner shows us that some church people in maral times were very corrupt he is proud of being dis honest and does not try to hide it so his story teaches us that greed leads to death but he himself cannot stop being greedy so this makes one of the most interesting characters in The Canterbury Tales prus is a high ranking nun who leads other nuns okay you can say that prus is the leader of all the nuns and in the canary Tales the pus is named Madam eagle who tries very hard to act like a noble lady in reality prus should be very simple she has to be very simple because of the religion but now this prus in the canabury tales is wearing so much expensive things she speaks French she is very careful about her manners when she eats she dabs her uh lips she dabs her mouth okay before drinking anything or before eating anything so she wears nice things she has a famous fancy bracelet on her hand and that says Amore Vincent Omnia which is a Latin phrase that means love conquers all it's not all that the Pirus love her little dog she has a little dog in her hand and she feeds him the best food roasted meat fine bread how a person can be there are so many poor people in the earth and she has a soft heart for the animals that's good she cries when a mouse gets stab in the rat trap but that does not make sense nuns are supposed to help the poor people then feeding expensive food to the dogs Prius is such sort of person and she tells a story about a little boy who is Christian and he loves to sing a religious song about Mary Jesus mother she tells about a story of the young boy who is singing the song and now this boy is singing the song and he goes into the Jewish neighborhood and when the Jewish people saw him singing Jewish people killed him but this dead body is still singing the song and because of this singing of this dead body the people gathered around so and people punished the Jewish people so now this story tells us something very important about the prus remember uh this is the same woman who cries when she sees a mouse in a rat trap she feeds the dog she feels very sad for the animals but then she's telling the story of full of violence so the prior story and behavior tells about a lot about Medieval Times Many religious people back then like prus were more worried about looking good on the outside she wears nice clothes she wears brelet and her stories all about hate that she is spreading among the Christians for Jewish she's just like the many officials of the church who wear fancy things who have proper manners but they are not very kind to people so she might look perfect from the outside but her Story shows us that she is not perfect she is not so gentle from inside the nuns priest is a priest who serves as chaplain to the Prius so Prius we have just discussed that uh the the priest is the leader of all the nuns and now this priest is the chaplain to the priest okay so we don't know much about how he looks what is the personality he has but his taale is one of the most famous stories in the Canterbury Tales so here we go with the nuns priest tale which is a funny story about a rooster named Chanty clear and his favorite hand ptil lot both are hands both are roosters one night what happens is that chy clear has a bad dream about a fox and and tells pertiet about his scary dream so pertiet said and don't worry about such dreams it is just a dream don't worry about it why why the fox will come here but then it happened later after a few days a fox came into the farm and he started flattering Chan he said janle you are so good your voice is so good wow you sing very good I want to hear your song so the FK started tricking chantle by doing the flat Tre so chantar was felt very proud and chantle said okay I will sing a song for you and uh so he opened his mouth and closed his eyes and he started singing as he opens the mouth and starts singing chanar okay the the fox grabbed that chanar in his mouth and ran away but now chantar is also clever John knows the fox is proud and likes to show off he suggested to the fox wow you are so clever you are so good you you just caught me tell this show off Bast tell this to everyone that you have caught a hand you have caught CH clear tell about your achievement and he starts flattering in return to the fox so Fox brags about it and as soon as the fox open his mouth to tell everyone that uh he is so proud that he caught chy clear and as he opens the mouth the chanler flies away from his mouth and sat on the trees top now the fox is upset because his pride and his desire to show off make him lose his Diner so this Tale shows how even a simple story can teach important lessons about Pride flattery and being careful who you trust the moral of the story is that don't trust flattery now we have the M the monk in the can tale is not what we expect uh from a monk so regular monk in medal times were supposed to be very simple they should pray in their monasteries they should do all the sort of things that a monk has to do but this monk is very different he loves hunting he owns many expensive horses he wears fine clothes with f dream and has a gold pin to fasten his hood he wears expensive Woods he is fat his face shines showing he eats well he drinks well so instead of staying in Monastery and spend time in studying the religion this Monk Is hunting so the monk now tells many stories about Lucifer falling from Heaven Adam being thrown out of paradise great rulers who lost everything famous people who had Bad Endings more than his tales his tales are not important but his character is important he is supposed to live a simple life but then he loves hunting and owns many expensive horses now let's talk about a frier whose name is Herbert a frer in medal times was supposed to be a religious man who lived by begging and helping poor people but in the Canterbury Tales he is nothing like this he's a very corrupt man who uses his position to make money and have an easy life so the frier in the Canterbury Tales tells a story of a corrupt Summoner so Summoner means who summon people to church court who do regular crimes so not big crimes who regular crimes like marriage problems and divorce adultery so this frier tells the story about Summoner who mates a devil on the road the Summoner and devil became friends because they both like to trick people and take their money at the end of the story The Devil drags the Summoner to hell as punishment for being so greedy and dishonest frer tells this story because he want to show that bad people gets punished in the end here again the frier himself has done so many things wrong in his whole life he takes the money from the poor people he takes the advantage of women also he makes a lot of women PR pregnant and leave them such type of person the frier is telling such stories that's irony that's hypocrisy and uh listening to this story a character gots offended because this story is about the Summoner and the Summoner is already present over there so SAR got offended by listening to the story of frier that how can you tell story about a Summoner we are not all same so Summoner in Revenge tells a story about a frier you can say so here we go with the Summoner story [Music] now as discussed here we have a Summoner who gets offended by the story of the frier so the Summoner in the Canterbury Tales again is also not a very good man he's a corrupt one also his face is bright red with pimples he has scaly black eyebrows he has a hot temper children are frightened off his face he loves garlic onions and strong wine as you know that the summoner's job is to bring criminals to the court but this suer is very corrupt again okay he lets people skip the Cod no need to come to the CT just give me some money so this suer attacks the frier and tells a tale on frier where we have a sick man who is annoyed because a frier is torturing him to give bribe and in this Tale the sick man is very frustrated and says that I have a gift for you you so when the frier goes near to the sick man the sick man farts loudly on his face and everyone starts laughing on frier so this uh Funny Story shows how much Church officials like Summoners and Friars always hate each other and how these Church officials are so corrupt that's what the frier told the story on Summoner the Summoner now told the story on FR so that's a sort of Revenge we have seen in this particular work next we have the person who is the very few person who is very good in the Canterbury Tales unlike other Church officials we have just seen monk partner priest and all those people are so much dishonest people but now this priest is very genuine he helps poor people even though he is poor himself he visit all the people no matter how far they live he believes that priests should live good lives to set an example and when it's Parson's turn to tell a story he delivers a great sermon about the seven deadly sins he's the opposite of corrupt Church okay he actually practices what he preaches uh he care more about helping people than making money from those people so he is one of the good characters in this particular tale we don't have to study the tale of par but uh his character is important the merchant is a serious looking man who sits high on his horse and wears nice clothes he loves to talk about money um how to make money how to do business he's very good at borrowing money and trading of course but he never share his own problems of the money he also have a lot of problems of money but he keeps on bosting about how to do business how he how to earn more money how to earn more money that sort of thing he always speak so the merchant tells a story about marriage and he is also very bitter about marriage because it's like his marriage is not so successful and he hate his marriage so he tells a story on marriage and here we go with his story we have an Old Knight who is 60 years old his name is January now this old man decides to marry a young woman named May but may secretly loves a young man man named Damian who works for January now what happens is that January became blind he lost his side he became very jealous that he cannot look at M's Beauty he is old he is blind now and you know that may and Damian loves each other January somewhere knows all of these things and he didn't let May to go anywhere but then may and the Damian created a plan to meet each other so one day in January's Garden May tells her blind husband that she really wants to eat some peers from a tree she says that she needs to climb to the tree to get them but this is just a trick Damian is already sitting in the top and she wants to make love with the Damian so what happens is that the gold Pluto um feels sorry because of for January so Lord Pluto what does is that he gives the eyesight to the January and January got the eyesight and he opens his eye and he looks at the tree and he finds May and Damian making love with each other but may is very quick and clever May said I was on the tree because I was praying from the god to give you the sight even though January saw what had really happened what they were both doing but January believed the May okay so this is the tale of merchant and according to the merchant it's foolish for an old man to marry a young woman according to him wives can easily trick their husband and marriage and real love does not always go together so the merchant tells this story because he is bit towards his own marriage and he thinks marriage is just a waste of time so these all the important things uh that you have to remember from Canterbury Tales okay we don't have any major character in this story left now we have discussed almost all these things but then again I will uh attach a PDF under this lecture so that you can go through the factual information that you have to remember for the competitive examination uh the sort of mcqs that you may find in the competitive examination but make sure that you make down the notes on these major points that we have just discussed in this particular video all right so in the next video we will discuss some more important works and that's it for this thank you