Just re-reading Canterbury Tales. Of course, as a classic, Chaucer gets five stars. AND Neville Coghill gets five PLUS stars for his wonderful poetic translation from the old English to modern English.

The tales were written over a long period of time, some are bawdy, most are none-to-complimentary of women, some are preachy, one in particular is HORRIBLY anti-semitic. We have to consider the times and worldview in which these tales were written before judging too harshly. I just grit my teeth. The BEST ones are the bawdy ones, in my opinion. I did read parts of this in high school (definitely not the bawdy parts), and I remember reciting a part of the wife of bath's prologue in Old English to my high school Brit Lit class (I was sort of precocious and nerdly as a high school kid). I was too young to appreciate the context in which the tales were written when I was a kid, however. I didn't realize how thoroughly the mythologies of Rome and Greece were mixed with the medieval Christian beliefs in these stories. Truly a masterpiece--not just of Brit Lit, but of Western Civ.