Editing General Prologue (section)

{{Short description|First part of "The Canterbury Tales"}}
[[Image:HengwrtChaucerOpening.jpg|thumb|250px|The first lines from the General Prologue at the opening folio of the [[Hengwrt Chaucer|Hengwrt manuscript]]]]
[[File:Chauser knight from prologue.png|thumb|250px|Illustration of the knight from the General Prologue. Three lines of text are also shown.]]
[[Image:Tabard inn mid19th.jpg|right|thumb|The Tabard Inn, Southwark, around 1850]]
The "'''General Prologue'''" is the first part of ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'' by [[Geoffrey Chaucer]]. It introduces the [[frame story]], in which a group of [[pilgrim]]s travelling to the shrine of [[Thomas Becket]] in [[Canterbury]] agree to take part in a storytelling competition, and describes the pilgrims themselves. The Prologue is arguably the most familiar section of ''The Canterbury Tales'', depicting traffic between places, languages and cultures, as well as introducing and describing the pilgrims who will narrate the tales.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Scala |first=Elizabeth |date=2017 |title=The General Prologue: Cultural Crossings, Collaborations, and Conflicts |url=https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu/gp1/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231216185715/https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu/gp1/ |archive-date=2023-12-16 |access-date=2024-02-07 |website=The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales}}</ref>