Chaucers The Canterbury Tales Essay -- Chaucer Canterbury Tales Essay

Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales While the majority of literary classics today do well at engaging the reader and allowing them a vicarious understanding of a fictitious character’s life, Chaucer found a way to engage more than just the reader and the character. In his Canterbury Tales, Chaucer masterfully links together himself as the author, himself as a character in the story, the other characters, and then finally the readers. Chaucer’s â€Å"narrative flow† forms a type of giant sphere, where connections can be made from both characters and real people to characters connecting with other characters. Starting with Chaucer-the man, it is apparent that he is looking at his characters, the pilgrims on their journey. As he is writing their stories and descriptions, Chaucer is creating them to emulate people he has found in real life. Chaucer watches his own created characters to see how they react and therefore expresses his personal views of certain classes of people. Chaucer-the man also sees Chaucer-the pilgrim. Like his created pilgrims in the story, Chaucer has found a way to put ...