Chaucer in Context

Whilst the Canterbury Tales are universally acknowledged as one of the great texts of English literature, there is perhaps less critical agreement about their meaning than for any other work in the English literary canon.

In particular, critics and historians have been unable to reach any consensus about the social, political and religious values which Chaucer favoured. Did his writings represent a challenge to the dominant social outlook of his day or were they intended to reinforce the contemporary status quo? Was Chaucer a poet of profound religious piety or a sceptic who questioned all religious and moral certainties?

Was he a defender of women or a misogynist whose writings reproduced the antifeminism characteristic of his time? How do Chaucer's works relate to medieval ideas about the nature and purposes of poetry? Do his pilgrims reflect the social reality of his day or were they the expression of traditional literary conventions?

Writing as an historian, Rigby argues that instead of seeking to modernise Chaucer, we need to locate his work in the context of the thought, social issues and political controversies of Chaucer's own day.