Social Evenings and Events

‘The Canterbury Tales’ represents English life at the end of the Medieval Age. It is a collection of stories about stereotype and social classes and they reveal a picture of English life in the 14^th Century. The characters/the pilgrims are chosen, so that every aspect of Medieval society is represented; the aristocracy, the trades, the clergy and the labourers. The characters express typical beliefs and values common in the Middle Ages. One modern aspect of the Tales is that Chaucer presents things exactly as he sees them. He makes apologies for this in several places and asks the readers to not to be offended, telling them to just skip the parts they don’t want to read. Chaucer lets us see these folks as they really were, bad language and all! At certain times, he says something akin to, “Don’t blame me, I’m just telling you what I heard!”

The original work is a poem written in Middle English and is difficult, though not impossible, for a modern reader to understand. For this evening, however, we explored the modern version by Phil Woods and a great time was had by all as we recreated the opening scene as the pilgrims travel from Southwark to Canterbury and arrive at the Tabard Inn and we then re-enacted The Millers Tale in its entirety.