Two levels of character, the Poet, the Host, the Miller, the Reeve.

On an April day, twenty-nine pilgrims leave the Tabard Inn for Canterbury; Chaucer places Robyn the Miller at the head of the pilgrimage with the Host, Harry Bailey.

The Knight’s tale, epitomizing the genre of courtly love, initiates Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales on a proper

lassicism (sometimes referred to as neoclassicism) is the principles and aesthetic attitudes emphasizing form, simplicity, proportion, and emotional restraint based on the culture, art, and literature of ancient Greece and Rome.  Classicism in literature is predominately inspired by antiquity and characterized by the faithful adherence to ancient aesthetic ideals rather than individual expression.  Furthermore, classical poetry was written with an aura of pride and  “denotes the imitation of Greek and Latin themes … [as well as] the imitation of Greek and Roman literary forms in composing works on any theme” (137 Preminger)  Either way, classical writers maintained a “rationality and universality [in] their themes” (139 Preminger).  Notable English classical writers are “John Dryden (1631-1700), Thomas Rymer (1641-1713), and Alexander Pope (1688-1744)” (139 Preminger).  Their poems were inherently conservative, prideful of the ancient ideals, and express distrust in innovation and change.  In Essay on Criticsm, Alexander Pope describes the philosophy of classical poetry as: