The Inn, the Cathedral, and the Pilgrimage of The Canterbury Tales

Author / Editor
Jonassen, Frederick B.

Title
The Inn, the Cathedral, and the Pilgrimage of The Canterbury Tales

Published
Susanna Freer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 29 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 1-35.

Description
Mikhail Bakhtin's distinction between "carnivalesque abandon and lenten mortification" and Victor Turner's distinction between liminality and "communitas" illuminate the dual nature of the pilgrimage--or of the material and the spiritual, the innkeeper and the Parson, and the Inn and the Cathedral; however, the Pardoner's complete rejection of both unites the two polarities to suggest that CT "is an emphatic reconciliation of the Inn and the Cathedral, which are united in the idea of pilgrimage."

Alternative Title
Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in the Canterbury Tales.

Chaucer Subjects
Canterbury Tales--General.