At the beginning of The Canterbury Tales, the narrator notes that a particular time of year—spring—has a tendency to inspire pious fervor in people, such that they are driven to go on pilgrimage. Many of these people will come from all across England to seek "the hooly blisful martir"—that is, St. Thomas Becket—in the hopes that he will help them find what they are looking for.
The narrator himself is about to go to Canterbury for this purpose, when he begins his tale in the Tabard inn at Southwark (now part of London). There are many others who arrive that night at the inn, what he calls a "sondry" company of twenty-nine, who have fallen together because they are all going to Canterbury. The narrator approaches this group and tells them that he, too, is on his way to Canterbury to make a pilgrimage, and suggests that they all...
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get up early to continue on their journey together the following morning.
The narrator lists all 29 pilgrims: a knight, a squire, a nun, another nun and three priests, a monk, a friar, a merchant, a clerk, a sergeant of the law, a franklin, a haberdasher, a carpenter, a weaver, a dyer, a tapestry maker, a cook, a shipman, a doctor, the Wife of Bath, a poor clerk and his brother, the plowman, a reeve, a miller, a summoner, a pardoner, and a manciple.
At the very beginning of the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, we find that the narrator is present at the Tabard inn, which is located at a place called as Southwark in London.
In Southwark at the Tabard, as I lay
While the narrator is resting at the inn, he is joined by a group of about twenty-nine pilgrims. All of the pilgrims, like the narrator, are getting themselves prepared for their pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett in Canterbury. After meeting the pilgrims, the narrator tells them that he will also join them in this sacred journey.
Ready to start upon my pilgrimage
To Canterbury, full of devout courage,
There came at nightfall to that hostelry
Some nine and twenty in a company
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