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1 Geoffrey Chaucer was an outstanding English poet, and today is remembered still as the most significant poet to write in Middle English (online literature.com). He made a critical contribution to English literature in using this style of writing when most of poetry was at that time being written in Anglo-Norman or Latin (classicnotes.com). One of the few works of the English Middle Ages written by Chaucer that is still being published today is The Canterbury Tales (classicnotes. com). The Canterbury Tales is said to have presented Chaucer at his best (Hooper XI). Chaucer never finished The Canterbury Tales as he had originally planned. In fact he only completed twenty-four tales total, whereas he had originally planned to tell over one hundred tales (Hooper XII). His original idea was to have each pilgrim tell four tales, but he ended up not even completing one tale for each pilgrim (classicnotes.com). The Canterbury Tales is a collection of a variety of stories told by traveling pilgrims from all classes of society while on their way to visit the shrin