File:Curious questions in history, literature, art, and social life. Designed as a manual of general information (1890) (14578259148).jpg

Identifier: curiousquestions00kill (find matches)
Title: Curious questions in history, literature, art, and social life. Designed as a manual of general information
Year: 1890 (1890s)
Authors: Killikelly, Sarah H. (Sarah Hutchins), 1840-1912
Subjects: Questions and answers
Publisher: Philadelphia, Keystone
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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erof English poetry. Chaucer was born in London in1328, and died in 1400. The Canterbury Tales are eighteen in number,told by a company of pilgrims on their way to visit the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. There were twenty-nine pilgrims. They assembled at the Tabard, an inn in Southwark, a suburb of London, and there agreed to tell one tale each, both going and returning; and the person who told the best tale was to be treated by the rest to a supper at the Tabard on their return. The whole number of tales should have been fifty-eight ; but only eighteen were told, not one being narrated on the homeward journey. In these tales, English life as it then existed is wonderfully portrayed, — when the king tilted in tournament ; when the knight and the lady rode over the down, with falcon on wrist; when pilgrims bound for the tomb of St. Thomas passed on from village to village ; when friars, sitting in taverns over wine, sang songs that formed a remarkable contrast with the ser-
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CURIOUS QUESTIONS. 213 vices they so piously and sweetly intoned in church and chapel. All that stirring and gayly apparelled time — so different from our own — is seen in Chaucers work : as in every other, when the superficial tumults and noises that so stun the contemporary ear have faded away, leaving behind that which is elemental and eternal, the poet is found to be the truest historian. Geoffrey Chaucer died on the 25th October, 1400, aged seventy-four, and was buried in Westminster Abbey,the first of that long line of English poets who make the Poets Corner a spot of such world-wide interest and renown. Cambuscan was a rich and powerful king who lived at Sarra, in Tartary. He excelled in all the qualities which belong to a wise and good king. Twenty years after Cambuscan had been in possession of the crown, he celebrated his birthday by a splendid festival. The story is based upon the events of this feast, during which a knight rode into the court, with presents from the king of

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