What Is The Background Of The Canterbury Tales?

Briefly, the story is that a group of people are on a Christian pilgrimage to Canterbury, to go and pray at the shrine of St Thomas a Becket. Pilgrimages were common in the Middle Ages, and some people used them as a holiday rather than for religious reasons - Chaucer's pilgrims have very mixed motives. In the Tales, they all meet up at a London inn before riding to Canterbury together, and on the way they tell stories to pass the time. These stories are the Canterbury Tales.

You can find a lot more information here www.unc.edu - just scroll down to the sections on background, history etc.