Mobility and Identity in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

<p><em>The Canterbury Tales</em> is a collection of stories told by pilgrims <em>en route</em> to Canterbury; but how does their movement shape the world around them and how are they shaped by their world? This volume seeks to answer these questions by exploring expressions of mobility in Chaucer's frame narrative and tales. Combining the theoretical and historical methods of literary analysis with the interpretive tools of cultural geography and ecocriticism it argues that movement is the medium through which identity is performed in <em>The Canterbury Tales</em>. This unique interdisciplinary approach shows how physical and ideological mobilities shape and are shaped by geographical ecological sociopolitical and gendered identities. As human and more-than-human bodies cross borders and dissolve boundaries they contribute to a fluid permeable and hybrid world that challenges traditional perceptions of boundedness security and fixity. By examining this kinesis alongside contexts including medieval bridge building economics and biology this book reveals a rich exchange between word and world. In the end <em>The Canterbury Tales</em> emerges as an amalgam of lived experience and the poetic imagination that both chronicles and constructs a world in the process of becoming.<br /><br />SARAH BRECKENRIDGE WRIGHT is an assistant professor of English at Duquesne University.</p>