For his follow-up to The Decameron, Pasolini selected Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the other great fourteenth century collection of stories. If the world of Pasolini’s Decameron is that of the dawning of the Renaissance, the world here is decidedly medieval, with a concomitant emphasis on the vulgar and the grotesque. Although the “Trilogy of Life” was conceived as a celebration of the body, this middle piece marks a palpably darkening mood. Returning to the episodic structure so central to Pasolini’s cinema, the film recounts a series of amorous misadventures with a sharp emphasis placed more on sex than on love, lust or desire. Climaxing with a wildly scatological vision of Hell, The Canterbury Tales is propelled by notably cruel humor, a violence more pointed than The Decameron and an even more raw sexuality.