Readers sometimes neglect what is most extraordinary about the Canterbury Tales: its dazzling variety of stories and styles. Although story collections were a recognized literary form long before Chaucer (and were especially popular in the late Middle Ages, as shown by Boccaccio's Decameron and the Confessio Amantis of Chaucer's contemporary John Gower), no other example of the genre contains the radical literary individuality of the Canterbury Tales nor creates such complex relationships among its different parts. Chaucer himself had earlier used the form in the unfinished Legend of Good Women, but the Legend is a disappointment to some Chaucerians, largely because its stories of suffering women are so alike in approach and content. Uniformity also mars for many modern readers a story-collection within the Canterbury Tales: the several tragedies of the Monk are finally halted by the Knight because he says they are too pessimistic, though, as the Host suggests, their real fault may be their sleep-inducing monotony. But monotony is the last word one would use to describe the Canterbury Tales as a whole. The work is energized by unexpected juxtapositions of styles and subject-matter, so that, for example, a long romance of ancient heroism comes before a short, witty tale of local lust and an account of alchemical swindlers follows a story about ancient martyrdom.