The narratives we may call 'tales of pathos' - the tales of the Man of Law, Second Nun, Clerk, Physician, Prioress, and Monk - make greater demands on a modern reader's historical sense and imaginative sympathies than probably any other grouping in the Canterbury Tales. An understanding reading can be rewarding, however, in several ways. They introduce us to modes of thinking and feeling central to fourteenth-century experience, illuminating aspects of Chaucer's world he otherwise left unexplored. They also testify to his passionate interest in the many forms of story flooding the late medieval world. Not of least importance, several of his greatest achievements are found here.

'Tales of pathos', however, are not a genre. No two narratives are the same: they include a saint's life, a miracle of the Virgin, a series of de casibus stories, a religious romance, an expanded exemplum, and a folktale. These tales vary, too, in the degree of pathos aimed for and achieved. The Second Nun's Tale and the Monk's Tale - with one striking exception - are only marginally pathetic, whereas the Clerk's Tale, the Prioress's Tale, the Physician's Tale, and the Man of Law's Tale are intensely so. Nevertheless, they may be properly considered together. They share a narrative mode and a method of treatment, they possess several features in common, and they make essentially the same demand on a modern reader, and are best understood and appreciated by reference to certain characteristics of fourteenth-century experience and mentality.