Task 5. Fill in the gaps while viewing

Geoffrey Chaucer* described those pilgrims in his Canterbury Tales. He began the book in 1387. Chaucer’s narrator meets up with 20 other pilgrims. Each one tells 1)… stories. Canterbury Tales is an extraordinary collection of fables (басен). Chaucer’s pilgrims make up a broad cross-section of the 2) ……. from a knight (рыцарь), a prioress (жена священника) - to a miller (мельник), a carpenter (плотник), a cook. Chaucer’s stories were relevant and accessible (доступны) to every day folk as soap-operas are today.

Chaucer was able of reaching a very 3) …. audience of people because he wrote in English. The amazing thing about Chaucer was that he was writing in the language of the 4) ……. It was for the first time that stories were written in English. Until then all written documents were in Latin or in the language of the Norman ruling class – French. Chaucer was the first to spell the words and started the process of standardizing English. Chaucer was not only the father of English literature, he laid down the English sense of 5) …… and national identity. He was a true forerunner of Shakespeare and Dickens.

Task 6. Discuss some of Chaucer’s famous aphorisms:

Time and tide wait for no man.
The guilty think all talk is of themselves.