ABSTRACT
Most modern critics of Geoffrey Chaucer have raised the question of the overall structure of the Canterbury Tales. The ‘tenor’ is the meaning, the narrative content: Chaucer undertakes, by translation, to follow the content of the story, using both Virgil and Ovid. Chaucer’s manipulation of the Classical story, therefore, in a context where it stands by itself, and is not subordinated to any wider purpose, is conditioned by purely narrative considerations, that is, his changes relate to motivation, to effective presentation of the main characters, to pace. Chaucer showed in Sir Thopas a detailed knowledge of a number of more or less popular English romances, as Mrs Loomis’s study of the poem has proved. In the Knight’s Tale, Chaucer uses the same framing formula to effect transitions from one episode, and character, to another. The enmity of the two lovers, and their philosophical speeches, are changes made by Chaucer.
