In Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales,” the pilgrimage frame originally promises two tales each way.
The Host proposes that each pilgrim tell two stories on the journey to Canterbury and two on the return journey. With about thirty pilgrims in the company, that plan would have produced a very large collection. Chaucer completed only a fraction of the projected total before his death, so the surviving work is unfinished.
The pilgrims gather at the Tabard Inn in Southwark before setting out to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. Their stories range from romance and saintly legend to comic fabliau, sermon, beast fable, and moral tale.
The number of surviving tales is much smaller than the number proposed in the frame. Manuscripts differ in arrangement, and scholars debate the intended final order, but the Host’s four-tale-per-pilgrim plan is stated clearly in the opening framework.