What is a Canterbury Tale?

Author / Editor
Frost, William

Title
What is a Canterbury Tale?

Published
Western Humanities Review 27 (1973): 39-59.

Description
Seeks to define the phrase "Canterbury tale," by exploring the relative usefulness of various critical approaches to Chaucer's tales. Comments on how the tales engage their respective genres in "unpredictable" ways, how they characterize their tellers, how they "comment on the nature of communication," and how, despite their "relative literalness," they typically present complex relations between literal and allegorical meanings.

Chaucer Subjects
Canterbury Tales--General