Geoffrey Chaucer was attempting, in his description of the twenty nine pilgrims on their way to Canterbury Cathedral to offer readers a cross section of medieval society. The general prologue to The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer is written in iambic pentameter, which means that it is rhythmic with ten syllables or five beats per line, and rhyming couplets, which means that the final words in consecutive pairs of lines rhyme, which is called heroic couplets. Heroic couplets are the most common form of narrative poetry. Heroic couplets are also the dominant form of narrative poetry and Chaucer helped to establish this type of poetry. Chaucer's pilgrims are written so that they belong to the genre and literary tradition of medieval estates satire, where a particular profession was mocked, criticized or ridiculed. This was because Chaucer was concerned that his society was becoming worldly and materialistic. To offer the...