How long does it take to read The Canterbury Tales?
Geoffrey Chaucer, John E. Cunningham, Peter Ackroyd, Ted Stearn, V. A. Kolve, Glending Olson
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, John E. Cunningham, Peter Ackroyd, Ted Stearn, V. A. Kolve, Glending Olson takes about 7 hours 56 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 7 hours 56 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1478. 433 pages, about 119,075 words. Written for children.
16 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 13 hours 14 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 7 hours 56 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 4 hours 58 minutes |
The page count is the median across 734 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
A collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales (mostly in verse, although some are in prose) are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. In a long list of works, including Troilus and Criseyde, House of Fame, and Parliament of Fowls, The Canterbury Tales was Chaucer's magnum opus. He uses the tales and the descriptions of the characters to paint an ironic and critical portrait of English society at the time, and particularly of the Church. Structurally, the collection bears the influence of The Decameron, which Chaucer is said to have come across during his first diplomatic mission to Italy in 1372. However, Chaucer peoples his tales with 'sondry folk' rather than Boccaccio's fleeing nobles.
Subjects: Death, English Narrative poetry, Juvenile poetry, Fiction, Storytelling in fiction, Textual Criticism
