Such credit accrued to those who made such journeys that professional pilgrims were soon making the journey, returning with relics, badges, and pilgrim symbols (such as the palm for one who had made the trip to Jerusalem) and often with tall tales of the places they had visited. Chaucer's House of Rumor (in The House of Fame) characterizes pilgrims with "wallets stuffed with lies.
Tournaments - Great tournaments - such as the tournament at London in 1390 illustrated above -- were great civic and political events. In his capacity of Clerk of the Works, Chaucer had the task of overseeing the construction of lists for tournaments such as this. There are some interesting parallels between the tournament in the Knight's Tale and that depicted above (see the articles cited in the note to KnT 2491-656, p. 839 in the Riverside Chaucer). The tournaments were often accompanied by elaborate spectacles, such as those displayed for the entrance of Queen Isabella into Paris, which inspired the English tournament discussed above.
The Language- Chaucer was of the gentle classes and he clearly spoke French from an early age and probably first wrote poems in French, the language of the courts in which he served first as a page in the court of the Countess of Ulster and then as squire in the courts of Prince Lionel and Kings Edward III and Richard II. The situation was changing in Chaucer's lifetime -- or rather, changes that had been operating since the thirteenth century were beginning to have an obvious effect. The aristocracy used French but most used English as well. King Edward I knew English and even enjoyed English poetry. However, French continued its cultural dominance: The court of King Edward III was French in culture and cultivated French poetry, with French poets ausch as Jean Froissart and Otho de Graunson, whom Chaucer knew, helping to set the tone. Furthermore the court began speaking Parisian French, an acquired skill, rather than Anglo-Norman, the variety of French used in England, to which earlier nobles had been born. By the time Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales the form of speech brought over by the Normans was still extent only in the provinces, a source of gentle satire in the portrait of the Prioress:
And Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly,
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,
For Frenssh of Parys was to hire unknowe.
(General Prologue, I.124-26)
