Each of the "tales" in Geoffrey Chaucer's poem The Canterbury Tales are told by a different pilgrim on a journey to the city of
Canterbury. The poem has a large story (pilgrims going to Canterbury) that encloses all the "little stories" or tales the pilgrims tell. Which best describes the type of structure Chaucer is using in his poem?
Frame narrative refers to a story that appears within another story. This is a literary technique in which a story serves as an introduction or a setting for a more developed story or set of stories. In this case, <em>The Canterbury Tales</em> is built as a frame narrative because each of the pilgrims' stories is told within the larger narrative of the pilgrimage. Other works of literature that use this structure are <em>Frankenstein</em> and <em>The Thousand and One Nights</em>.
