Modern Day Canterbury Tales Refreshes Chaucer to Tell the Lost Stories of Refugees

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, his unfinished account of a 13th-century pilgrimage, the host, in his cheerful and accommodating manner, suggests that as they walk the pilgrims should tell tales.

A 1939 mural of the pilgrimage found in "The Canterbury Tales." Library of Congress John Adams Building, Washington, D.C. Library of Congress

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales,” his unfinished account of a 13th-century pilgrimage, the host, in his cheerful and accommodating manner, suggests that as they walk the pilgrims should tell tales. Not their own tales, which might be the modern way, but the tales of other people. It becomes clear too that the tales themselves are largely the result of other journeys.

Chaucer inscribes into the language a deep connection between poetry and human movement.