Little Coloured Bricks

The Canterbury Tales is an anthology of stories written by the English author Geoffrey Chaucer during the 14^th Century. The stories in The Canterbury Tales are recounted as part of a story-telling competition among the pilgrims who are traveling together on a trip to Canterbury Cathedral to visit the temple of Saint Thomas Becket, hence the title. Included in this collection are the tales of Troilus and Criseyde, House of Fame, and Parliament of Fowls.

The Canterbury Tales is considered to be Chaucer’s masterpiece and a great accomplishment of Western culture. Chaucer was also able to create in The Canterbury Tales the very first unreliable narrator in literature: the tour guide, whose character is said to be based on Chaucer himself.

This collection of tales written in Middle English have inspired many other works including William Shakespeare and John Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen, which retells The Knight’s Tale. The same story was also recently adapted into a more MTV-generation-friendly film with the same title, starring the late Heath Ledger.

In April 1, 2006, the author of a Geoffrey Chaucer blog asked his readers to “declaymen my tales” (declaim my tales) in honor of his favorite month.

As a response, a Lego aficionado made Lego minifigs of 20 of the Canterbury Pilgrims:  The Knight and the Squire, The Yeoman, The Prioress, The Second Nun, The Nun’s Priest, The Monk, The Friar, The Merchant, The Man of Law, The Franklin, The Cook, The Shipman, The Physician, The Wife of Bath, The Parson, The Miller, The Manciple, The Reeve, The Summoner, and The Pardoner. The set was impressive not only because of the effort given by the creator to make each minifig distinctive but also because of the near-perfect representation of Chaucer’s well-beloved pilgrims through the use of detailed accessories that help establish each of the characters.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 1:37 pm and is filed under Lego Creations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.