Tell Me A Story

Tell me what makes you laugh, cry, or angry. Tell me what troubles you. Tell me what you wish wasn’t true or was true in your life. Tell me about the traditions of your ancestors. Tell me about something you overheard on your way to work, school, or somewhere you just had to be. The point is anything can be a story. It can be your story, your ancestor’s, an acquaintance, or one of a complete stranger. A story can be something you read, overheard, or were once told by someone. These stories can be based on true events, fictional, or anything in between. Stories are a beautiful, wonderful thing that have existed for millions of years.

Stories can bring people together, help pass time, teach a new skill, or help us relive a time before our time. In the case of The Canterbury Tales, it seems that the stories of each of the characters was for pure entertainment and to help pass time during their pilgrimage to Canterbury. The “General Prologue” of the Canterbury Tales sets up the stories of 12 different characters who are to each tell two stories: one on their way there and one on their way back. The goal at the end of the pilgrimage was to declare a winning story.

Compared to modern day, the structure of The Canterbury Tales reminds me of the way we tell and listen to stories today. One of the many examples reminds me of the times my family and I would go on long road trips telling stories along the way to help pass the time. My mother always set it up very similarly to The Canterbury Tales, where we each had to tell a story and the winning story received some sort of prize in the end. I believe my mother’s goal was to help bring my siblings and I closer together. The stories we told helped us connect during our long trips and remind us that we were all very different. We each had our own point of view, and told stories we thought might be entertaining or were important to us. But just like The Canterbury Tales which never declared a winner, our little family contest never really had a winner.