Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340 – 1400) was an English poet and author, bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat and Member of Parliament. He wrote many works of literature, but is best known for The Canterbury Tales. He is sometimes known as the ‘Father of the English language’.
The Canterbury Tales were written in Middle English at the end of the 14th century. They helped to establish English as a language in its own right in addition to Latin and French.
They tell the story of a group of 31 pilgrims who meet while travelling from the Tabard Inn in Southwark to the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury. To pass the time on the journey, they decide to each tell two tales to the assembled company on the journey there and the journey home. The result is regarded as a masterpiece of medieval literature and The Canterbury Tales holds a central place in the history of English literature. Between the tales, the pilgrims bicker and chatter in a way that brings the characters and social world depicted by Chaucer to life. It would obviously not be possible to tell all the 24 surviving stories so this talk concentrates on three of the so-called marriage tales. Most famously that of the Wife of Bath who offers in a long prologue a condemnation of celibacy and a lusty account of her five marriages. In his tale the Clerk tells how a marquis marries beautiful low-born Griselde after she agrees to obey his every whim. He then subjects her to a series of cruelties to test her love.

The Franklin’s tale centres on the danger of the ‘rash promise’. While her husband, Arveragus, is away, Dorigen is assiduously courted by a squire, Aurelius. She spurns him but promises to return his love if he can accomplish the task of removing every rock from the coast of Brittany so that her husband may have a safe return from sea.