What is The Canterbury Tales?
{{italictitle}} [[File:Canterbury Cathedral 102 Pilgrims.JPG|thumb|Pilgrims on the road to Canterbury in a window of the cathedral]] '''''The Canterbury Tales''''' is a collection of stories written by [[Geoffrey Chaucer]]. It was written in the [[14th century]]. It was one of the first books to be written in Middle English. The book is about a group of pilgrims travelling from London to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket in the city of [[Canterbury]]. The thirty characters involved meet at the Tabard Inn in London and, before they start their journey, they agree on a challenge: to pass the time, each of them will tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two stories on the way back. However, Chaucer only managed to write 23 stories (one was partially finished): two of the stories are written in [[prose]], while the others are written in [[verse]]. == Background == ===Canterbury Cathedral=== [[File:Canterbury Cathedral 092 Murder of St Thomas.JPG|thumb|The murder of Thomas Becket]] ''The Canterbury Tales'' is about a group of [[pilgrimage|pilgrims]]. They are travelling to on eof the most important important [[sacred site|sacred sites]] of their time: the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket. In the [[Middle Ages]], many Christian people went on pilgrimages to [[Jerusalem]], [[Rome]], [[Santiago de Compostela]] and [[Canterbury]]. Thomas Becket had been the [[Archbishop of Canterbury]] in the 1100s. He had an argument with his old friend, King [[Henry II]], and in 1170 he was murdered by some of the King's knights on order from the King. The King felt very sad and guilty. He had a magnificent [[tomb]] built for his old friend. People began to visit the tomb. Soon, some people said that Thomas Becket was a saint, and that his bones could work miracles. He is regarded as a [[martyr]] for the [[Christianity|Christian faith]] and as a saint by both the [[Roman Catholic Church|Roman Catholic]] and [[Anglican Church|Anglican]] churches. In the late [[Middle Ages]] his shrine made Canterbury one of the four most impor