Read for school in May 1988, in Middle English, which is most of what I remember.
The framing device is the achievement. A pilgrimage, a storytelling contest, and a cross-section of fourteenth century England that lets a knight and a miller sit in the same book without either one being the point.
What surprises people is how crude a lot of it is. The Miller’s Tale is a fart joke sustained for several hundred lines.
