Jonty Claypole

They're going to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Thomas a Beckett.

And we'll be explaining more about that in due course.

But he was the archbishop.

He was murdered by knights in King Henry II's entourage in the 12th century for resisting the absolute power of the monarch.

And over the ensuing centuries, Thomas a Beckett had become a saint and Canterbury had become a hugely important shrine, not only in Britain, but actually all through the Christian world, all

The narrator, who we assume is a version of Chaucer himself, although who can say?

And in fact, I think one of the great innovations in this poem, along with the many other innovations, is the unreliable narrator, the narrator himself.

says things in this prologue, which are very obviously disingenuous.

But he introduces all of the pilgrims that he is amongst.

There's 29 in all.

And he says, I mean, he's basically being the commentator at the Met Gala.

He says, very specifically, I'm going to say who they are, what their status is, what they're wearing.

So he's basically saying, we've got Margot Robbie, Hollywood A-lister, wearing a

you know, dress that looks like a giant tomato.

And so he's doing that here.

He's saying, we've got a knight who, etc.

So the main players, certainly at this point, seem to be the knight, who is the highest in social rank.

His son, the squire, there's a prioress, a monk, a friar, a merchant, a clerk,

who's a scholar, essentially, a wife of Bath and a parson.

And various others are briefly mentioned, including lots of job titles that don't exist anymore ever since the Catholic Church was suppressed in England.