Some of the tales (stories) are serious and others are funny. Some of the funny stories are vulgar (sexually rude). A lot of the tales talk about the Christian faith. Sometimes the "theme" (main idea) of one story is followed into the next story, as a new story-teller responds (or answers) to a story they have just heard. All of the tales are about the way that people think and behave towards each other.
"The Canterbury Tales" is written in the type of English that most ordinary people used in Chaucer's day. Chaucer was one of the first authors (writers) who wrote stories in English. Before, stories were written in Latin or French. Some other writers of Chaucer's time also wrote in English. Some of these writers were John Gower, William Langland, and the Pearl Poet.
Chaucer planned the stories before he wrote them but he did not finish his plan. He planned that each character would tell four stories: two while going to Canterbury and two while returning to London. If Chaucer had finished, he would have written 120 stories. He only actually wrote 24. Chaucer began to write the stories in the 1380s. He stopped writing them in the 1390s. Some think that he deliberately did not write the total 120 stories.
Chaucer was an important person in the royal court. Some people think that, in the stories, Chaucer was saying things about court politics. Some people think that Chaucer based his characters on people that he really knew and who were at the royal court.
Some people think that Chaucer copied ideas from others peoples’ writings because some of the stories in "The Canterbury Tales" are very similar to them. The characters, however, are very different. The characters have different occupations and personalities. They all tell different types of stories and they tell them in different ways.The big story is about many pilgrims traveling to Canterbury. They are riding horses and the trip takes several days. Chaucer does not say much about the big story and most of the writing is about the stories told by the pilgrims.
The two earliest manuscripts (hand-written copies) of "The Canterbury Tales" are the Hengwrt manuscript and the Ellesmere manuscript. There are also 84 manuscript and four printed copies of "The Canterbury Tales" that were made before 1500. There are quite a lot of differences in the different copies. Some experts on Chaucer have started The "Canterbury Tales Project". The project is to read all these copies of "The Canterbury Tales", find out the differences and write the most accurate copy.
With the exception of the Innkeeper/host Harry Bailey, the various manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales had various drawings of each of the Pilgrims who told a tale; other Pilgrims mentioned who did not tell a tale or who were illustrated were the knight's yeoman, a haberdasher, a carpenter, a weaver, a dyer, a tapestry weaver; a plowman. The original intenent was that each pilgrim was to tell two tales to Canterbury and two on the way back for a free meal; that would have been an estimated 120 tales-instead of the 23 in the book. Indeed, the only Pilgrim who tells two tales is Chaucer himself: Sir Thopas [unfinished] and Tale of Melibee.
North Reading Room, west wall. Detail of mural by Ezra Winter illustrating the characters in the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Library of Congress John Adams Building, Washington, D.C
Sweat
Sweat, or perspiration, is a liquid made by the skin when the body is hot. Sweat is made in sweat glands under the surface of the skin. It comes out of tiny holes in the skin called pores. Sweat is mostly water, but it also contains some salts.
The body makes sweat to cool itself down. It is part of the body's thermoregulation. The sweat takes the heat from the body when it evaporates (turns to gas).
Some people think sweat makes a person smell bad. Many people use special sprays to stop this from happening. Deodorants hide the odor of sweat. Anti-perspirants stop the body from sweating.
The sweat glands in our skin contains two different groups of sweat glands: apocrine sweat glands and merocrine sweat glands.
Perspiration, or sweat, is your body's way of cooling itself, whether that extra heat comes from hardworking muscles or from overstimulated nerves. The average person has over 4 million sweat glands in their skin. Sweat glands are distributed over the entire body, except for the lips, nipples and external genital organs. The sweat gland is in the layer of skin called the dermis along with other "equipment," such as nerve endings, hair follicles and so on.
The sweat gland is a long, coiled, hollow tube of cells. The coiled part in the dermis is where sweat is made, and the long part is a duct that connects the gland to the opening or pore on the skins's outer surface. Nerve cells from the sympathetic nervous system are connected to the sweat glands. There are two types of sweat glands:
We are constantly sweating, even though we may not notice it. Sweating is your body's major way of getting rid of excess body heat, which is produced by metabolism or working muscles. The amount of sweat produced depends upon our states of emotion and physical activity. Sweat can be made in response to nerve stimulation, hot air temperature, and/or exercise. First, let's concentrate on how sweat is made in an eccrine sweat gland.
When the sweat gland is stimulated, the cells secrete a fluid (primary secretion) that is similar to plasma -- that is, it is mostly water and it has high concentrations of sodium and chloride and a low concentration of potassium -- but without the proteins and fatty acids that are normally found in plasma. The source of this fluid is the spaces between the cells (interstitial spaces), which get the fluid from the blood vessels (capillaries) in the dermis. This fluid travels from the coiled portion up through the straight duct. What happens in the straight duct depends upon the rate of sweat production or flow:
Sweat is produced in apocrine sweat glands in the same way. However, the sweat from apocrine glands also contains proteins and fatty acids, which make it thicker and give it a milkier or yellowish color. This is why underarm stains in clothing appear yellowish. Sweat itself has no odor, but when bacteria on the skin and hair metabolize the proteins and fatty acids, they produce an unpleasant odor. This is why deodorants and anti-perspirants are applied to the underarms instead of the whole body.
The maximum volume of sweat that a person who is not adapted to a hot climate can produce is about one liter per hour. Amazingly, if you move to a hot climate such as the American desert southwest or the tropics, your ability to produce sweat will increase to about two to three liters per hour within about six weeks! This appears to be the maximum amount that you can produce.
When sweat evaporates from the surface of your skin, it removes excess heat and cools you. This is actually due to a neat principle in physics, which goes like this. To convert water from a liquid to a vapor, it takes a certain amount of heat called the heat of vaporization. This heat energy increases the speed of the water molecules so that they can escape into the air. For water, this value is 540 calories/gram or 2.26 x 106 joules/kilogram. So, if you can produce one liter of sweat, which is equal to 1000 g or 1 kg (density of water is 1 g/ml or 1 kg/l) in one hour, then 540,000 calories of heat can be removed from your body. This is an extreme example using the maximum amount of sweat that a person can make. Typically, all of the sweat does not evaporate, but rather runs off your skin. In addition, not all heat energy produced by the body is lost through sweat. Some is directly radiated from the skin to the air and some is lost through respiratory surfaces of the lungs.