Which statements are true about Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales?

A) The General prologue describes the meeting of twenty-nine pilgrims in the Tabard Inn.
B) The parson’s tale is the introductory tale that deals with seven virtues
C) The Canterbury tales is written in prose and verse of various metres
D) Only twenty-three pilgrims tell stories and there are only twenty – four stories told altogether.
E) The prioress tale tells about the murder of a mother by a child.

Choose the correct answer from the options given below.

The correct answer is A, C, D Only.

Let us analyze each statement to understand why this option is correct:

• Statement A is True: The General Prologue of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales establishes the frame narrative. It describes the narrator meeting a group of twenty-nine pilgrims at the Tabard Inn in Southwark as they prepare to journey to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury.
• Statement B is False: The Parson's Tale is not the introductory tale; it is the final, concluding tale of the collection. The introductory tale is the Knight's Tale. While the Parson's Tale is a long prose sermon focusing on penitence, the seven deadly sins, and their opposite virtues, its description as "introductory" is incorrect.
• Statement C is True: The Canterbury Tales is written in a variety of literary forms. While most of the tales are written in verse using meters such as decasyllabic couplets (an early form of the heroic couplet) and rhyme royal, there are two tales written in prose: The Tale of Melibee and The Parson's Tale.
• Statement D is True: Although Chaucer's original plan was for each pilgrim to tell four stories (two on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back), the work was left unfinished. In the surviving text, only twenty-three pilgrims tell stories. Since Chaucer himself narrates two tales (The Tale of Sir Thopas and The Tale of Melibee), the total number of tales told is twenty-four.
• Statement E is False: The Prioress's Tale is a miracle of the Virgin Mary that describes the murder of a devout young Christian schoolboy (a child) by members of a Jewish community, not the murder of a mother by a child.

Therefore, only statements A, C, and D are correct.