An introduction to Chaucer in capital tale (7)
I believe the answer is:
romance
'tale' is the definition.
(I know that romance is a type of tale)
'an introduction to chaucer in capital' is the wordplay.
'introduction to' says to take the initial letters.
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'capital' becomes 'Rome' (capital of Italy).
The initial letter of 'chaucer' is 'c'.
'an'+'c'='anc'
'anc' put within 'rome' is 'ROMANCE'.
(Other definitions for romance that I've seen before include "Novel - love story" , "Various languages such as French" , "marriage?" , "Novel (or often its main theme)" , "Cameron (anag) - love story" .)