Dr. David Allen White introduces Chaucer, telling his life and focusing on his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales. Dr. White explains the connection between Chaucer and the works of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, and shows how The Canterbury Tales reveals a whole tapestry of the social order of the Middle Ages. Dr. White also explains how the Tales contain seeds of modern thought, as we see the individual beginning to strive to break free of the Catholic social order. Analysis of the Medieval understanding of stories as such. Taken from: Christianity in the Late Middle Ages-Early Renaissance - 1996 VonHildebrand Institute