The Monk's Prologue and Tale

The Monk's Tale is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.

The Monk's tale to the other pilgrims is a collection of seventeen short stories, exempla, on the theme of tragedy. The tragic endings of the following historical figures are recounted: Lucifer, Adam, Samson, Hercules, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Zenobia, Pedro of Castile, Peter I of Cyprus, Bernabò Visconti, Ugolino of Pisa, Nero, Holofernes, Antiochus, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Croesus.

Literary critics believe that a large portion of the tale may have been written before the rest of the Canterbury Tales and the four most contemporaries added later. A likely dating for this first-edition of the text is the 1370s, shortly after Chaucer returned from a trip to Italy where he was exposed to Giovanni Boccaccio's Concerning the Falls of Illustrious Men as well as other works like the Decameron. The tragedy of Bernabò Visconti must have been written after 1385, when he died. The basic structure for the tale is modeled after the aforementioned Concerning the Falls of Illustrious Men and the tale of Ugolino of Pisa is retold from Dante's Inferno.

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