The Reading Room

Geoffrey Chaucer’s attack on the clergy in his prologue to The Canterbury Tales takes on new life in the form of the rivalry between the Friar and the Summoner, who each take their turn following the Wife of Bath. In their antagonism towards each other, they both take up a comic story insulting the other’s profession and exaggerating the other’s characteristic faults, neglecting many of the greater aspects of the conversation in exchange for cruder jokes at each other’s expense.