Upon The Ways: The Structure of The Canterbury Tales

Critics have accounted for the genesis and the ordering of The Canterbury Tales by hypothesizing some particular intention in Chaucer’s mind. However, the most interesting thing about the bit and pieces of Chaucer’s unfinished text is their potential for entering into particular relations with each other. Placing the fragments of The Canterbury Tales into relation with each other, even though we cannot speak meaningfully of any single one of those relations as historically correct, is a way of understanding each fragment more fully by understanding its possibilities.