![]() ![]() More often than not, moreover, the specific tone of the tale is extremely difficult to firmly pin down. The tales include romantic adventures, fabliaux, saint's biographies, animal fables, religious allegories and even a sermon, and range in tone from pious, moralistic tales to lewd and vulgar sexual farces. ![]() No single literary genre dominates the Tales. ![]() ![]() It is both one long narrative (of the pilgrims and their pilgrimage) and an encyclopedia of shorter narratives it is both one large drama, and a compilation of most literary forms known to medieval literature: romance, fabliau, Breton lay, moral fable, verse romance, beast fable, prayer to the Virgin… and so the list goes on. Chaucer’s richly detailed text, so Dryden said, was “God’s plenty”, and the rich variety of the Tales is partly perhaps the reason for its success. Since its composition in late 1300s, critics have continued to mine new riches from its complex ground, and started new arguments about the text and its interpretation. The Canterbury Tales is at once one of the most famous and most frustrating works of literature ever written. ![]()
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