The Canterbury Tales in Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)

Dec 31, 2010 Everyman rated it it was amazing

Okay, so the language is a bit strange, you don't understand all the words, but go with it. Don't read it in a modernization and miss all of Chaucer's magnificent language (and much of his sly humor). You'll get used to it pretty soon, I promise you. And if you have any musicality in your soul, the cadences and richness of his imagery will captivate you.

If you thought the 14th century was prudish about its language and strict about its morality, you're in for a shock. Chaucer's richness includes ...more

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Dec 29, 2018 Laura rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-2019, audio-books, british-literature, poetry, fiction-14th-century

From BBC Radio 4 - Drama:
1/2 Queen of Ambridge amateur theatricals, Lynda Snell, takes charge of this barnstorming new adaptation of Chaucer’s classic tales. Join the cast of The Archers to enjoy stories of courtly love, deadly rivalry and boisterous sex - with a little bit of magic thrown in for good measure.

“A festive feast of spellbinding stories and bawdy banter … Another Lynda Snell triumph!” – The Borchester Echo

Written by Geoffrey Chaucer
Dramatised by Nick Warburton

Director …. Kim Greengr ...more

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Mar 05, 2017 Maggie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, short-stories, poetry, classics, humour, british

Written in verse, the fictional narrator of The Canterbury Tales, who is also Chaucer, tells us that he joined a company going on a pilgrimage to a saint at Canterbury. He describes each of the other 29 people. The host of the inn that they are at then proposes that each person tell four stories, two on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back, and that he will then pick the winner who tells the best story. The company agrees, and they start on their journey of storytelling.

I read David Wri Written in verse, the fictional narrator of The Canterbury Tales, who is also Chaucer, tells us that he joined a company going on a pilgrimage to a saint at Canterbury. He describes each of the other 29 people. The host of the inn that they are at then proposes that each person tell four stories, two on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back, and that he will then pick the winner who tells the best story. The company agrees, and they start on their journey of storytelling.

I read David Wright's translation of this. The Middle English has an idyllic, rolling twang that gives the narration character, but I was spending too much time trying to translate the words to appreciate their meaning. David Wright was mostly faithful to the original, but he changed the phrasing and added his own rhymes to create pleasing, melodious sounding verses.

The first thing to note is that this book was never completed. The Cook and the Squire's stories are incomplete, some of the characters are not given any stories, and each of the rest tell only one story. The book ends not with the revelation of the winner, but with the author retracting anything evil or anti-Christian that he has written in his lifetime.

On the surface, this book is simply a collection of tales. But it is more than merely a short story collection. In the general prologue, the narrator describes each of the characters. There is a knight, a squire, a monk, a nun, a friar, a sailor, a cook, a wife of Bath, a reeve, a summoner, a scholar, and many more besides. The prologue describes many of them satirically, giving a flattering description of their work before throwing in hints of corruption and greed. Their characters are further expounded on in the conversations that they engage in in the prologues that precede most of the stories. Thus we hear the stories from that character's voice, and knowing the background of the character, the circumstances immediately preceding the telling of the story, and the reason why the story was told, each story takes on a deeper meaning. The friar and summoner's tales, for instance, mean nothing until you realise that they are taking jibes at each other. The pardoner's tale could be simply an entertaining moral tale warning against greed if we did not know that he uses such stories to persuade people to part with their money for his own greed. The stories themselves reveal each story teller's character, stereotypes of his/her occupation, rank, habits, values and morals. Each story has its speaker's voice - the knight's is high-sounding and chivalrous, the reeve's is coarse and violent. Some pepper their stories with prayers and morals, some tell us that they are plain people who can speak nothing but the facts. At times, the overlapping voices confuse us, and we do not know if the moral being told is the character's the fictional Chaucer's, or the actual author Chaucer's.

One of my favourite parts of this book was Chaucer's own story. In this competition of storytelling, where the characters are stereotypes representing real people, the author is careful not to defame others by giving them bad stories. But his own character tells a ridiculous story of Sir Thopas, so ridiculous that the host cuts it short. It is hilarious, and when the author has proven his skill in telling good stories, this poor tale only displays his genius at writing.

The stories are varied, with genres including classic epics, common bawdy tales, a miracle of the virgin tale, animal fables, fairy tales, and even sermons. But they revolve around a few common themes. There is marriage and adultery, feminism and anti-feminism, chivalry, and Christianity and paganism (sometimes with both Christianity and Greek gods in the same story!). Each story tells a moral, but the morals sometimes contradict each other, and sometimes the reader is left to judge what is good or right. The final story, the parson's tale, is less of a story than a sermon in prose on penitence. David Wright leaves it out completely, and suggests that this, along with the author's retraction, was written near the end of Chaucer's life, when he realised that he would never finish the book, and wanted to make the most of the time he had left in writings that served God. Seen in this light, the whole book, which was written over 13 years, is a reflection of Chaucer's changing state of mind and opinions over a period of time. ...more

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