The Cook's Tale

E951571

The Cook's Tale is an unfinished, bawdy story from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales that follows the misadventures of an apprentice who abandons honest work for a life of revelry and vice.

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Statements (46)

Predicate Object
instanceOf Canterbury Tale
Middle English narrative poem
frame tale episode
approximateCompositionDate late 14th century
author Geoffrey Chaucer NERFINISHED
canonicalStatus part of the Chaucerian canon
collectionStructurePosition one of the early tales in the Canterbury pilgrimage sequence
countryOfOrigin England
depicts London tavern life
dancing and music
gambling
sexual promiscuity
featuresCharacter Perkyn Revelour NERFINISHED
Perkyn's host
Perkyn's host's wife
the Cook NERFINISHED
frameNarrator the Cook NERFINISHED
genre bawdy tale
fabliau
hasScholarlyDebate authenticity and completeness
hasTitleCharacter the Cook NERFINISHED
influencedBy French fabliaux tradition
isUnfinished true
language Middle English NERFINISHED
literaryForm story within a frame narrative
literaryMovement Middle English literature
literaryPeriod Middle Ages NERFINISHED
manuscriptTradition preserved in multiple Canterbury Tales manuscripts
meter iambic pentameter
moralStance implicitly critical of idleness and vice
narrativeForm verse
narrativePerspective first-person frame with third-person embedded story
partOf The Canterbury Tales NERFINISHED
primaryManuscriptLanguage Middle English GENERATED
protagonistOccupation apprentice cook
relatedWork The Miller's Tale NERFINISHED
The Reeve's Tale NERFINISHED
rhymeScheme rhyming couplets
setting London, England
surface form: London
textualState breaks off abruptly
theme apprenticeship and misrule
idleness and work
urban immorality
vice and revelry
tone comic
satirical

Referenced by (2)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

Cook associatedWith The Cook's Tale
subject surface form: Cook (The Canterbury Tales)
Cook hasTale The Cook's Tale
subject surface form: Cook (The Canterbury Tales)