The correct answer is: There are real-life pilgrimages portrayed, but Chaucer's characters are fictional people telling fictional stories. The theme of pilgrimages was current at that time. The poet pretends that he meets 30 other pilgrims, with an omnipresent innkeeper. The pilgrimage is a literary resource to unite a diverse group. The stories show a reality of a time since the city of Canterbury for the visit to the cathedral to seek cures, the pilgrimage had a series of inconveniences because it had to travel by streams, bridges, roads, climates with a lot of heat or with a lot of rain, some went on horseback, in carriage or on foot, they also met merchants, beggars, charlatans, among others.