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60 free The Canterbury Tales trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Canterbury Tales trivia for anyone who once memorised 'Whan that Aprill' or just remembers the rude bit in the Miller's Tale. The quiz starts with the frame: Middle English, the years of composition, Becket's shrine, the Tabard in Southwark, Harry Bailey the Host, the four tales each pilgrim was meant to tell, who drew the short straw to go first, and how many tales actually got written. It covers the manuscripts and printing too: Hengwrt and Ellesmere, Adam Pinkhurst, the Huntington Library, Caxton's 1476 edition, the ten Fragments and the four tales in rhyme royal. The tale-by-tale section takes in Palamon and Arcite and Arcite's fatal horse, the Miller 'quiting' the Knight, Nicholas's fake flood and Absolon's misdirected kiss, the Wife of Bath's giant prologue and the loathly lady's answer, the Pardoner's Radix malorum, his three rioters and fake relics, Chauntecleer and Pertelote and the fox's fatal vanity, plus the Prioress, the Summoner, Lollardy, Powell and Pressburger and Pasolini. It ends with Chaucer himself: the vintner's son, the ransom at Reims, Katherine Swynford, a gallon of wine a day, the customs house, the astrolabe for his son, Troilus, and the first grave in Poets' Corner. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Tales, the General Prologue, the individual tales, the Ellesmere manuscript and Chaucer's life, with the supporting sentence attached to each question. Easy questions suit anyone; the expert tier reaches the 858 lines of the Prologue and the four rhyme-royal tales.
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Q 01In what language are The Canterbury Tales written?
Middle English
Chaucer used a London dialect of late Middle English; the final -e was still pronounced and the Great Vowel Shift had not yet happened.
Q 02How many tales does the collection actually contain?
24
The Prologue promised four from each of some 30 pilgrims, about 120 stories; most scholars think the work was unfinished at Chaucer's death.
Q 03Whose shrine at Canterbury Cathedral are the pilgrims travelling to visit?
Saint Thomas Becket
The martyr was reputed to have the power of healing the sinful.
Q 04Roughly when did Chaucer write The Canterbury Tales?
1387–1400
He died on 25 October 1400 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Q 05At which Southwark inn do the pilgrims gather at the start of the journey?
The Tabard
Established in 1307 for the Abbot of Hyde, it stood on Borough High Street where the road to Canterbury and Dover began.
Q 06What is the name of the Host, the innkeeper who proposes the storytelling contest and judges it?
Harry Bailey
New research suggests the General Prologue pastiches the real Harry Bailey's 1381 poll-tax account of Southwark's inhabitants.
Q 07According to the Prologue, how many tales was each pilgrim meant to tell?
Four: two going and two returning
That would have made about 120 stories; only 24 exist.
Q 08How do the pilgrims decide who will tell the first tale?
They draw straws
The Knight wins; the drunken Miller then barges in ahead of the Monk to tell the second.
Q 09In which month does the pilgrimage begin, according to the famous opening lines?
April
The Prologue praises the month whose showers and warm west wind bring the earth back to life.
Q 10How many lines long is the General Prologue?
858
It introduces the pilgrims according to the three medieval estates: clergy, nobility and commoners.
Q 11Which Italian work has more parallels with The Canterbury Tales than any other?
Boccaccio's Decameron
A quarter of the tales have a parallel there; its storytellers have fled the Black Death, and it too ends with an author's apology.
Q 12Which two early manuscripts, apparently by the same scribe, are the most important witnesses to the text?
Hengwrt and Ellesmere
The scribe has been identified as Adam Pinkhurst, possibly the 'Adam' Chaucer scolds in a short poem.
Q 13Where has the illustrated Ellesmere manuscript been kept since 1917?
The Huntington Library, California
Q 21Which 1613 play by Shakespeare and John Fletcher is based on the Knight's Tale?
The Two Noble Kinsmen
A 1566 play on the same story by Richard Edwardes is lost; the 2001 film A Knight's Tale borrows the title.
Q 22What word does the drunken Miller use to describe paying back the Knight's Tale with his own?
'Quite' (requite)
The Reeve, a former carpenter, then 'quites' the Miller in turn with a tale disparaging a miller.
Q 23In the Miller's Tale, how does Nicholas persuade the carpenter John to spend the night in a tub hung from the barn roof?
He predicts a flood twice as great as Noah's
Henry Huntington bought the Bridgewater library privately through Sotheby's in 1917.
Q 14Who printed the first edition of The Canterbury Tales, in 1476?
William Caxton
It was among the first books printed by the first person to use a printing press in England.
Q 15How many manuscripts of the Tales survive?
84
Only the Prick of Conscience survives in more copies among vernacular English texts, giving the Tales medieval bestseller status.
Q 16Into how many 'Fragments' do scholarly editions usually divide the Tales?
Ten
Tales within a Fragment are linked, but the order between Fragments is uncertain; modern editions mostly follow the Ellesmere order.
Q 17Which two tales are told by Chaucer himself, travelling with the pilgrims?
Sir Thopas and the Tale of Melibee
Sir Thopas is a doggerel parody of romance and the only tale outside Chaucer's usual metre besides the prose pieces.
Q 18Which four tales use rhyme royal rather than Chaucer's usual couplets?
Man of Law's, Clerk's, Prioress's and Second Nun's
His ten-syllable line was an ancestor of iambic pentameter and the later 'riding rhyme'.
Q 19Which two cousins compete for Emelye in the Knight's Tale?
Palamon and Arcite
They fall in love with her from their prison window in Theseus's Athens; Chaucer took the story from Boccaccio's Teseida.
Q 20How does Arcite die after winning the tournament in the Knight's Tale?
His horse throws him and falls on him
Saturn intervenes on Venus's side; dying, Arcite tells Emelye to marry Palamon.
John lives in Oxford with his much younger wife Alisoun; Nicholas is his lodger, a clever student.
Q 24What does Alisoun offer the parish clerk Absolon at her window in the dark instead of a kiss on the lips?
Her backside
Absolon returns with a red-hot coulter from the blacksmith to take revenge.
Q 25The Wife of Bath's Prologue is notable for what?
Being twice as long as her tale
She defends women who, like her, have married several times.
Q 26In the Wife of Bath's Tale, what must the condemned knight discover within a year and a day to save his life?
What women most desire
Guinevere and her ladies had interceded to spare him from execution for rape.
Q 27What answer does the ugly old woman give the knight in the Wife of Bath's Tale?
Sovereignty over their husbands and lovers
She then demands his hand in marriage as her promised favour, an example of the 'loathly lady' motif.
Q 28What is the Pardoner's sermon 'theme', taken from 1 Timothy?
Radix malorum est cupiditas
'Greed is the root of all evils'; he admits he preaches against the very sin he practises.
Q 29What are the three rioters of the Pardoner's Tale looking for when they meet the Old Man?
Death, to kill him
He sends them to an oak tree where they find eight bushels of gold florins and forget their quest.
Q 30Where is the Pardoner's Tale set?
Flanders
The three young men spend their days in brothels and taverns before the funeral bell sends them after Death.