The Canterbury Tales

• Arguably the first great work of literature in English
• Written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the late 1300s (unfinished)
• A group consisting of all different levels of society are travelling together on a pilgrimage to Canterbury
• On the way, they tell each other stories to pass the time
• series of 24 tales, written in verse, adopting the personas of different members of society
• The tales are named after the person telling them: e.g. The Knight’s Tale, The Miller’s Tale, The Man of Law’s Tale, The Wife of Bath’s Tale
• They rarely reveal the names of their speakers: they are identified by their function
• Some are works of high chivalric romance, some are funny and rude
• It emphasises the Gileadean regime’s return the some of the principles of the Middle Ages: that people’s social functions are arranged in hierarchies
• The naming of the tales in The Canterbury Tales implies that one’s identity is bound up in one’s function in society – something key to Atwood’s novel
• There is a wider political dimension: by referencing a work which is for many the foundation of the literary canon, Atwood is asserting the importance of female voices being heard. (The majority of the Canterbury Tales are written from the perspective of men.) It is a statement of intent.
• In the Historical Notes, it is revealed that the title is an editorial decision by ‘Professor Knotly Wade’. So there is a wider significance in that the Professor may be offering an ironic – sarcastic? condescending? – title: a kind of in-joke for the academics, full of their own knowledge and self-importance. In this way, Atwood may be showing another example of the way in which Offred and her story/her story is not being taken seriously, or is appropriated by and reinserted into patriarchal culture.