Chaucer gathered pilgrims at a London inn in the 1380s and set them walking toward Canterbury, each telling tales to pass the time. The Knight, the Miller, the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner: the characters are as vivid as the tales they tell, and the tales range from romance to fabliau to sermon. Chaucer died before completing the project; what survives is enough. He invented English literature as a thing distinct from French and Latin, proved that English could do anything the prestige languages could do, and did it better.