ABSTRACT
Pilgrimages were a common feature of medieval life, and the shrine of the martyr St Thomas a Becket at Canterbury was the greatest of English pilgrimages. In the whole of The Canterbury Tales, in fact, Geoffrey Chaucer mentions remarkably few places north of the Wash, and then in a way which suggests he knew little more than their names. With The Canterbury Tales Chaucer had moved from early dream poetry, via the history of Trotlus and Criseyde, to time, here and in England. The most fascinating case of the growth of a pilgrim’s character throughout The Canterbury Tales is perhaps that of the Host. The philosophical material in The Knight’s Tale is no part of the romance convention, and, as in Troilus and Criseyde, comes from Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. Romances are like novels, and not only because they were the staple narrative diet of the Middle Ages.
