The Canterbury Tales

Timeline

1. c. 1387–1388Southwark · LondonChaucer adopted as the overall frame a pilgrimage departing from the Tabard Inn in Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury, introducing some thirty companions one by one in the General Prologue, including the Knight, the Prioress, and the Miller. This design turned the actual pilgrimage gathering point on London's south bank into a literary space and established the order of the collection.
2. 1387–1400London · EnglandOver the following decade or more Chaucer successively wrote the tales of the Knight, the Miller, the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner, and others, with great variation in genre and register. The original plan was for two tales each way, far larger than the surviving text; when the author died in 1400 only part of the scheme was completed, and the links between tales and the rules of the contest were left incomplete.
3. 1400–1410England · EnglandAfter Chaucer's death, scribes produced different arrangements based on the unfinished manuscript. Early manuscripts such as the Hengwrt and Ellesmere copies preserved the Middle English text and the tradition of illuminated miniatures, making this unfinished work quickly become an authoritative poetic collection among English readers in the fifteenth century.
4. 1476Westminster · LondonAround 1476 Caxton printed the collection as an early English printed edition, after which it was continually reprinted, translated, and annotated. It is read as a milestone of Middle English and has become a basic document for observing fourteenth-century English society, religion, and gender attitudes.