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.
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