ABSTRACT
Any discussion of the coherence of the Tales should properly begin, and perhaps may end, with the plain recognition that the work is unfinished. There are, of course, certain tales in which there is a high degree of connection between tale and teller, and their case should be instructive. Criticism tends to turn with relief to The Canterbury Tales. As author of The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer solves the purely external problem—what sort of story he is to give himself—by taking on two of the least obviously meritorious tales in the whole collection. Chaucer’s Tales have been read with admiration and imitated in most periods between the sixteenth century and the present.
