The Parsons Tale seems, from the evidence of its prologue, to have been intended as the final tale of Geoffrey Chaucers poetic cycle The Canterbury Tales. The tale, which is the longest of all the surviving contributions by Chaucers pilgrims, is in fact neither a story nor a poem, but a long and unrelieved prose treatise on virtuous living.[1] Critics and readers are generally unclear what rhetorical effect Chaucer may have intended by ending his cycle in this unlikely, extra-generic fashion.
