Stuff That Interests Me

Good Sunday to you,Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in around 1400, and it is considered one of the first great works of English literature.Try reading it today and you might question the “English” part. Here’re the opening lines:Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,It does not get much easier.Canterbury Tales is the story of group of pilgrims who walk from Southwark to Canterbury Cathedral. I have done the pilgrimage myself and I would urge you to as well. The structure is quite simple. To pass the time, the pilgrims have to a storytelling contest and so each tells his or her tale. There are around thirty pilgrims - in effect, thirty professions, and so we get the Knight’s Tale, the Miller’s Tale, the Wife of Bath’s Tale and so on.Here is the interesting part. Since the story was written in 1400 we have had, off the top of my head, the printing press, the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, steam power, fossil fuels, the internal c