Geoffrey Chaucer

As he examines the seven multitale fragments of the Canterbury Tales, Jerome Mandel reveals Chaucer's working concepts of artistic arrangement. Each chapter focuses upon the principles underlying Chaucer's construction of the fragments and shows how carefully Chaucer integrated all the parts into an artistic whole. In building the fragments, Chaucer adhered to principles of order that he invented, defined for himself, or discovered among the writers that he read. Chaucer never finished the Canterbury Tales. Knowing which stories he had at hand and realizing which stories he had yet to write, he began the process of arranging the tales sometime between 1387 and his death in 1400. He designed the order in which he wanted some of the tales to be read, wrote prologues and links, and manipulated the structure, themes, and characters of those tales he designated for each individual fragment. The same artistic techniques of contrast, cross-referencing, and leitmotif which unify the individual tales, he used to unify the multitale fragments and to ensure the coherence of the whole project. Even when they do not share the same tone, point of view, narrator, or genre, the tales within each f