SOURCE: "The Crucial Passages in Five of the Canterbury Tales: A Study in Irony and Symbol," in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. LII, No. 3, July, 1953, pp. 294-311.

Owen is renowned for the textual criticism in his works, Discussions of the Canterbury Tales, Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales and Pilgrimage and Storytelling in the Canterbury Tales. In the following essay, Owen analyzes symbolic passages in the "Franklin's Tale," the "Merchant's Tale," the "Wife of Bath's Tale," the "Pardoner's Tale," and the "Nun's Priest's Tale" to show how they foreshadow and unify their plots.

Chaucer's Art in the Canterbury Tales projects a complex world. To the dramatic pose of simplicity already adopted by Chaucer in many of his narrative poems is added the complication of a group of observed narrators. The intrinsic value of each of the tales is not its final one. Behind the artificial world...