The New Murrey and Blue blog

There is something that has always puzzled me about Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: if there were up to thirty pilgrims (which is what’s reckoned) how on earth could one of them (at a time)tell a tale that the other twenty-nine could hear?

In the text Chaucer has his pilgrims point out places they’re passing, so it would seem the stories were being told as they rode along. But someone at the back of the cavalcade couldn’t possibly hear someone at the front. Could they? I can only conclude that the tale-telling went on when they halted at the wayside, or stayed somewhere overnight.

Or…someone had a medieval megaphone!