The Monk’s Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

The pilgrim is interrupted before he can mention any more tragic characters

The Monk’s Tale is unusual among Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in several respects. For one thing, it is interrupted by another pilgrim before it can be completed, something it shares with Chaucer’s own Tale of Sir Thopas, which had been told not long before.

Secondly, the Tale uses a metrical form that is not used for any of the other Tales, although it occurs in some other works by Chaucer. This is an eight-line stanza with the rhyme scheme ABABBCBC.

Thirdly, it is not a single tale at all, but a succession of seventeen stories, of varying length, which all purport to say the same thing, namely “how are the mighty fallen”.

The background of the Monk’s Tale is the aftermath of Chaucer’s own Tale of Melibee. This had been Chaucer’s second tale, after the Host cut off his Tale of Sir Thopas and Chaucer offered “a little thing in prose” that turned out to be an immensely long tale that, to modern taste, is virtually unreadable, consisting largely of a philosophical discourse on the themes of revenge and forgiveness. However, this is to misunderstand 14th century likings and attitudes, and the pilgrims have clearly been listening intently, not least the Host.