The styles, methods and forms of literature greatly influence the reader's perception of the text while reading the composition. For example, works from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are perceived differently than those written in the last hundred years. This difference becomes even greater when people read the stories composed in the 14th century. One of the good examples of this distinction is “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer. Some of its fragments were written even before holistic narrative was explored. The central part of this composition was written between 1386 and 1389. The work itself belongs to the ancient traditional genre of the collection of short stories and novels united by a single plot. One hypothesis claims that the idea for this composition was taken from Boccaccio's “Decameron”. Rhyming couplets are best to characterize the style of “The Canterbury Tales” because two lines rhyme with each other. There is also iambic pentameter, with each line containing ten syllables, and a heavily emphasized syllable follows a less emphasized one. The dynamic and figurative plot gives Chaucer the ability to use or parody almost every literary genre written in that period. For example, one of the main parts of "The Canterbury Tales" is written like a novel. At the same time, this work also contains some elements of other medieval genres. The knight tells an adventure in the corresponding style novel and the prioress tells the legend of a tortured Christian boy. The Carpenter, however, provides the bawdy story with the spirit of urban folklore, and the stories of the Friar and Franklin, at the same time, are written in a fable-like style. The Merchant's narrative contains elements of folklore tale and parable. It is also important to remember that each of the stories told appears spontaneously during the characters' conversation. Some of them complement or enhance the previous ones and this makes “The Canterbury Tales” seem like a solid composition. This is what makes Geoffrey Chaucer an innovator of literature, it is the synthesis of different and opposing genres that creates a unique and unrepeatable work. Having an individual specific style, each separate story within the tales contributes to the creation of a peculiar encyclopedia of medieval genres. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayBased on the crossing of different forms and mixing his individual and traditional ways of telling, the writer creates a new type of narrative. Overall, “The Canterbury Tales” is told in a way where each story is a parody of the previous one or the exact way of telling the story that was popular in medieval times. Many of the 24 tales in Chaucer's work are taken from other books of the medieval period. These are the stories of the Knight, the Man of Law, the Monk and many other characters. Others originate from well-known folklore narratives. The only one that differs is the one told by Parson as if it were the sermon. Chaucer relies on "patrimonial satire" for his portrayals, which are basically stereotypes based on the occupation people hold or the social class they belong to. Another idea it draws on is “anticlericalism,” which is another collection of stereotypes about priests, monks, nuns, friars, and the like. In “The Canterbury Tales,” the characters perceive life as it is from a practical perspective, which is not what it should be. The reproduction of the obsolete truths of the golden age of chivalry is based on the visions of Chaucer's contemporary young generation appearing in the image of the squire, on the traditional adventurous heroism of agenre, the one that is witty, contagious and peculiar only to the cheerful maximalist nature. This is how the character of the Squire appears, receiving final and, apparently, unexpected blows in the story. A sybaritic lout in a portrait sketch of a General Prologue, as narrator, arouses sincere sympathy. In essence, he represents the parody of the conservative type of knight who acts in new and unexplored times for him. The story lays bare the convention of the ideal hero who has always been unattractive and whose immersion in life, on the one hand, crushes her, and on the other, changes her properly. This fall creates a controversy with the genre of the chivalric tale in which the abandonment of life in the other, after death, "humanizes" the hero. In total, by outlining a portrait gallery of a general prologue and creating characters from static faces, Chaucer adds drama to "The Canterbury Tales." The pilgrims reveal their essence not only in the stories and characteristics of the author, but also demonstrate it in disputes and dynamic dialogues, in quarrels saturated with dramatic content, in discussions and observations that people made to each other other. This is where the objectivity of character characteristics comes from. Personal characteristics and the responses to them also directly follow the actual characters of the people in the story most of the time. The author mocks the Monk, revealing his moral buffoonery as the Miller attacks the Host, and vice versa, and this opens up the most unpleasant aspects in the nature of the satellites. Furthermore, by offending the cook with obscene expressions, Franklin shows himself on the bad side. In this case nothing contradicts psychological credibility. Considering the image of the Knight as an ideal figure who embodies dignity, nobility and honor, but at the same time possesses some flaws, it is appropriate to conduct research on his history taking into account its structure and the poetic means used. by the author to create the completeness of the character's image. The story tells of the love of two cousins, Palamon and Arsita, for the Duke of Athens' daughter-in-law, Emilia. The cousins, being the princes of the hostile country, are imprisoned in a prison by order of Theseus. There, from a high tower, they both see Emilia and fall in love with her. Hostility arises between the cousins ​​and Theseus, when he finds out, organizes a knightly tournament, promising to give Emilia to the winner. Due to the intervention of the gods, Palamon wins and Arsita dies accidentally. The story ends with the marriage of Palamon and Emilia. Here it must be said that the story of the Knight is one of the longest presented by pilgrims. This legend creates a sense of solemnity and grandeur of the narrative as the narrator often moves away from the main action to present listeners with large fragments of detailed descriptions that often do not relate to the development of the plot (the description of the women of Thebes, mourning for the death of husbands, depiction of temples, festivals and battles). Knowledge of Chaucer's life is not just a detached observation of the researcher. His love for people is not sentimental or saccharine, and his laughter is not heartless mockery. Such a combination of love towards human beings, laughter and knowledge of life puts a sympathetic and understanding smile on Chaucer's face. “To understand everything is to forgive everything” goes the proverb. In fact, Chaucer is very forgiving. The Tale of the Wife of Bath, the tragic story of an aging lively woman, as well as the stories of the miller and the merchant about the young wife of an old husband, are humanistic in this sense, although the author does not ignore the harsh reality. Letting an Oxford student tell the story of a resigned bearer of passionnamed Griselda, Chaucer questions the act of a mother sacrificing her children for the sake of marital obedience. Griselda is dead, and so is her patience, And both are buried together in Italy; This is why I shout in front of everyone. No married man will be bold enough to test his wife's patience in finding Griselda, for he will certainly fail. All medieval ideas about marriage, obedience, divine justice, rights, duties and human dignity are overturned and completely shaken. The Wife of Bath's confession is written as a crude farce, but at the same time it is, indeed, tragic. It could not have been written by any other medieval writer. Fabliau's situations are often risky and require "base language", but Chaucer enriches them with the naive but fresh coarseness of the popular mores of his century. As the author appeals to the reader: "Keep the grain and throw away the husk." This fabliau zest of his, with its anecdotism and its roughness, is a tribute to the genre and to a century. The healthy grain, however, is the new that we find in them: the well-focused and juicy national language, the common sense counterbalanced by sober and derisive criticism, the brilliant, lively and energetic narration, the salty joke that falls into place, sincerity and freshness, understanding smile that justifies everything and victorious laughter. The peel that falls off easily cannot hide a mischievous, vigorous enthusiasm and a joke that mocks its worthy. All this serves Chaucer as a means for the image of contemporary earthly man, who was already breathing the first trends of the coming Renaissance, but not always capable of realizing and enclosing in abstract terms and concepts his peculiar "cheerful free thought" . Chaucer provides everything in a contradictory contrast. The roughness and dirt of life underline the nascent love, the withered accents the thirst for life, the vital uglinesses form the beauty of youth. All of this is bordering on the ridiculous. The laughter still cannot subside, the tears do not have time to dry, causing that mixed and positive feeling which in England was later defined as humour. Chaucer's compositional skill is manifested first and foremost in his ability to connect that which cannot be united. He represents different satellites with magnificent ease, and gradually from separate strokes the living image of the person appears, and from the accumulation of separate portraits the image of the whole medieval English society is formed. 'The Canterbury Tales' is a heterogeneous and multicolored work, just like real life. Sometimes it is bright and at other times it is dim and unattractive. Many stories that are invaluable as separate stories make sense and find their place through comparison by contrast in the overall context. Chaucer's composite innovation allowed him to admit all the contradictory features of the book into a realistic dominant. For this reason, even fantastic, allegorical and moralistic stories are justified as realistically as possible by the narrator. The writer creates the main plot precisely, concisely, vividly and timely. An example of this is the end of the Pardoner's story about the three rakes or that of the chaplain's story about the chase through the woods. The whole complex fable fabric and the prompt conclusion of the miller's story can be an example of this. Chaucer is reserved and stingy as a narrator, but when it is necessary to delineate his characters, he deftly draws both the room of Nicholas' companion, and the hovel of the widow, Shantikler's lover, and an excellent genre sketch of the monk's arrival- collector at the house of his spiritual son Thomas. Chaucer, in general, avoids long self-contained descriptions. He fights them with the weapon of parody, or he straightens up:.