These are introduced in the order of their rank in accordance with the three medieval social estates (clergy, nobility, and commoners and peasantry). The General Prologue establishes the frame for the Tales as a whole (or of the intended whole) and introduces the characters/storytellers. The Knight wins and prepares to tell his tale. They set off the next morning and draw lots to determine who will tell the first tale. The company agrees and makes the Host its governor, judge, and record keeper.

Whoever has told the most meaningful and comforting stories, with 'the best sentence and moost solaas' (line 798) will receive a free meal paid for by the rest of the pilgrims upon their return. He lays out his plan: each pilgrim will tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back. At the end of this section, the Host proposes that the group ride together and entertain one another with stories. The pilgrims include a knight his son, a squire the knight's yeoman a prioress, accompanied by a nun and the nun's priest a monk a friar a merchant a clerk a sergeant of law a franklin a haberdasher a carpenter a weaver a dyer a tapestry weaver a cook a shipman a doctor of physic a wife of Bath a parson and his brother, a plowman a miller a manciple a reeve a summoner a pardoner the Host (a man called Harry Bailey) and Chaucer himself. The narrator expresses admiration and praise towards the pilgrims' abilities. The narrator falls in with a group of pilgrims, and the largest part of the prologue is taken up by a description of them Chaucer seeks to describe their 'condition', their 'array', and their social 'degree'. This abundance of life, the narrator says, prompts people to go on pilgrimages in England, the goal of such pilgrimages is the shrine of Thomas Becket. The setting is April, and the prologue starts by singing the praises of that month whose rains and warm western wind restore life and fertility to the earth and its inhabitants. The narrator, Geoffrey Chaucer, is in The Tabard Inn in Southwark, where he meets a group of 'sundry folk' who are all on the way to Canterbury, the site of the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket, a martyr reputed to have the power of healing the sinful. The frame story of the poem, as set out in the 858 lines of Middle English which make up the General Prologue, is of a religious pilgrimage.

It introduces the frame story, in which a group of pilgrims travelling to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury agree to take part in a storytelling competition, and describes the pilgrims themselves. The General Prologue is the first part of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.

Chaucer the general prologue