The Tale of Melibeus

The Tale of Melibeus, one of the 24 stories in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Reproved by the host of the inn for his tedious narrative of “The Tale of Sir Thopas,” Chaucer in his own persona offers this prose allegory, a close translation of a French adaptation of a 13th-century Italian story. Long (over a thousand lines) and—despite the host’s earlier entreaties for something lively—dull, it is essentially a moral debate between Prudence...