Snapshots From Medieval England: Chaucer’s Pilgrims

Thanks to Chaucer’s prowess at pithy, memorable descriptive writing, no photographs are necessary to imagine his characters accurately.

A 1939 mural of the pilgrimage found in "The Canterbury Tales." Library of Congress John Adams Building, Washington. Library of Congress

One mark of the 21st century is the explosion of photographs and images taken on smartphones and published on social media. In 2016, the number of cellphone subscriptions surpassed the global population, a gap that continues to widen. Many phone owners take dozens, if not hundreds of photos and videos every year. That amounts to billions of family shots, selfies, pet pictures, and more.

These staggering numbers far outpace the number of photographs produced in the 20th century, and absolutely dwarf the number of images created when only the wealthy could afford to hire an artist and sit for a portrait. For most of human history, even these creations on canvas were rare. No drawings or paintings of William the Conqueror exist, whereas many modern toddlers have enough snapshots taken of them to fill a scrapbook.