A Single Book to Decipher the World: Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales—An Adventure Through Genres

Publish: July 29, 2019

Writer Profile

Takami Matsuda
Faculty of Letters Professor

Takami Matsuda
Faculty of Letters Professor

This book is part of the "A Single Book to Decipher the World" series published by 午夜剧场 Press. This series features a unified, innovative book design by Masahiro Okabe, and the publication of the first ten volumes has begun.

There is a Latin sentence that states, "Every creature is like a book and a picture to us, a mirror." This is the first line of a short poem attributed to the 12th-century European philosopher Alan of Lille. It conveys the message that all phenomena in the world hide some kind of message, and that the world can be deciphered like a single book. From the perspective that humanity has continued to provide books containing the keys to such decoding—that is, books to decipher the world—this series re-examines a diverse range of genres from both East and West.

Candidates include various works such as religious scriptures (the Bible and the Quran are included in the series), encyclopedic works (similarly, Genkai and the Encyclopédie), and narratives of various scales that prompt reflection on the world view (similarly, Journey to the West and Borges). All of these have been read across generations and accepted as classics.

As one such book, I chose The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, who was active in 14th-century England. This is not only because the work is a classic representing Western literature, but also because it is an adventurous literary work written with a view of the entire landscape of medieval European literary genres.

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories in which 29 pilgrims take turns telling tales on their way from London to Canterbury Cathedral. Under a fictional setting that could only be realized in literature—where pilgrims of different professions and social statuses share stories from diverse genres with different premises and functions while aiming for the same goal of Canterbury Cathedral—a world view that respects diversity and encompasses everything is depicted.

Other volumes in the series are scheduled to be published one after another over the next one to two years. On behalf of the series guide, "Sekayomu Cat," I highly recommend them.