Chaucer's Works, Volume 4 — the Canterbury Tales

In 14th-century England, a group of pilgrims gathers at a Southwark inn, bound for Canterbury. To pass the time, each traveler agrees to tell two tales going and two returning. What unfolds is a dazzling exhibition of medieval life: a noble Knight recounts a tragic romance of conquest and chivalry, while the bawdy Miller responds with a scathing tale of cuckoldry and farce. The Wife of Bath commands attention with her defiant account of female desire and marital power, the Prioress offers a touching story of religious devotion, and the Pardoner preaches against greed while embodying the very sin he condemns. Chaucer wrote in English when Latin was the literary standard across Europe, and his decision to capture the living speech of his era rather than the elevated tongues of scholars was itself a revolutionary act. The result is a work of staggering vitality, where sacred pilgrimage becomes an excuse for some of the dirtiest jokes in English literature, and where every social stratum from knight to plowman gets their moment on the stage. It remains essential reading because it invented the English novel in all its messy, contradictory, irresistibly human glory.