Books: Chaucer's pilgrimage

Canterbury shows the real world without defiling the mind | George Grant

The Canterbury Tales is a remarkable work that not only described but defined its age. Written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the late 14th century, the book is a masterpiece in every sense of the word.

Chaucer gives us a glimpse into the odd nuances of daily life during the halcyon days of the High Middle Ages. He offers us a remarkably enlightened-and thus a surprisingly revisionist-approach to the questions of medieval love, marriage, and family. He gives a chronicler's account of the raging social, political, and theological issues of the time (including Reformation-like critiques of corrupt clergy and indulgence-peddling).

But he is also a chronicler of the universal human condition. He has a genius for capturing the quirks and nuances of ordinary life, the twists and turns of ordinary conversation, and the motivations and inclinations of ordinary people. Chaucer painted a vivid portrait of the whole range of humanity-high and low, male and female, old and young, learned and ignorant, rogue and righteous, cosmopolitan and provincial-in some of the most beautiful descriptions ever penned and the most compelling plots ever imagined, all rendered in a rollicking good storyline brimming over with good humor.