In Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales are many stories diverse in topic and style. Among these stories told by twenty nine persons, is created an interesting interpersonal dynamic. Chaucer removes them all from their social circumstances and classes and levels the plane by placing all of the characters that tell the tales on a religious pilgrimage to Canterbury, England. Chaucer used this journey as a device to bring together his fictional persons from wide-ranging backgrounds and have them share a portion of their life through the telling of a tale. The entirety of the work involves the personal concerns and outcomes of individuals in an ever changing medieval culture. The pilgrimage provided an opportunity for Chaucer to negate the barriers of class and social propriety in order to include diversity in the tales. Each tale is told individually. Each character is detailed with well developed personalities and specified occupations, clothing and social standing and in each tale; Chaucer relays the changes going on about him in Medieval England on a person by person basis.
While The Canterbury Tales are relayed light heartedly, creating a caricature of medieval individuals and situations, Chaucer respected the religious doctrine of the time. The very fact that the characters of The Canterbury Tales are going on a religious pilgrimage tells of the ever increasing role of Christianity in Medieval society. While Christianity was becoming more accepted in the Anglo-Saxon period, its popularity has become more obligatory by medieval times for everyone from the peasant to the prince.
The tales themselves relay the shifting ideas and ideals of the society in which Chaucer lived; the prologues tell more of the life of the individual. In previous times, such as the Anglo-Saxon period, works of literature focused more on the persons and peoples that surpassed the normal and the