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    The Canterbury Tales (NHB Modern Plays)
    The Canterbury Tales (NHB Modern Plays)
    The Canterbury Tales (NHB Modern Plays)
    Ebook317 pages3 hours

    The Canterbury Tales (NHB Modern Plays)

    By Geoffrey Chaucer

    3.5/5

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    A landmark dramatisation for the Royal Shakespeare Company of one of the foundation stones of English literature. This two-play adaptation of Chaucer'sCanterbury Tales encompasses all 23 stories. All the famous characters are here - as well as many less well-known but equally full of life. Each of the stories has its own style - heroic verse for the Knight's Tale, vernacular rhymes for the Miller's Tale etc. - echoing the many narrative voices employed by Chaucer himself. The plays can be performed either together or separately. 'Rumbustious and passionate ... this is quite simply a glorious compendium of stories and poetry' -Daily Mail 'Scintillating ... Poulton's admirable version ... what takes one's breath away is the range of styles and emotions on display' -Guardian 'Mike Poulton's superb adaptation is both faithful and accessible, comfortably inhabiting the middle ground between Middle English and the modern vernacular' -The Times
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNick Hern Books
    Release dateNov 25, 2010
    ISBN9781780016740
    The Canterbury Tales (NHB Modern Plays)
    Author

    Geoffrey Chaucer

    Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) is considered to be the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages. He maintained a career in civil service for most of his life, working as a courtier, diplomat, and was even a member of Parliament, however, he is famed for his literary work. Best known for his book The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer normalized the use of Middle English in a time when the respected literary languages were French and Latin, causing a revolutionary impact on literature. Chaucer is regarded as the father of English Literature for his invaluable contributions and innovations to the art.

    Read more from Geoffrey Chaucer

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    Reviews for The Canterbury Tales (NHB Modern Plays)

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    • 4/5
      Chaucer is an author I have long neglected. I keep meaning to read him, but never do -- well finally I have in a Modern English translation. The translation is rhymed to boot. This is probably as good a translation as one can get, which made it much easier to read. I can't say the stories were mesmerizing or even that entertaining -- but it does make clear to me that most marriages were not all that happy and the most common entertainment was to seduce someone's wife or cheat on one's husband. I guess our tv shows have pretty much the same theme. There was one story, however, that was not about that. The Prioress' tale is about a Christian child who is murdered by some Jews and the miracle of the child singing though his throat was slit. It is an awful, anti-semitic story and disturbing too.
    • 3/5
      What do they say? Third time is a charm? It took me a third try to understand the attraction of this work, and even enjoy it.I read the Bantam Duel-Language version, edited by A. Kent and Constance Hieatt. Reading the duel-language, with the Middle English on the opposite page of the Modern English helped tremendously. I could read the modern version first, for understanding, then read the original version for the poetry and humor. In this way, I could appreciate both the meat and the broth of the stories.I am very glad that I read a book a year or two on the whole topic of Love and Chivalry in the Medieval times. It shines the light on a lot of behavior and actions in these stories which would have been dark and repulsive to me if I didn't understand where the ideas came from. Not that I'm saying the behaviors were not dark and repulsive. Even though not all of the tales were included here, I feel no compulsion to seek out more of them. This was an interesting read, and I'm glad I gave it a third chance.
    • 4/5
      I read this for a British author challenge; to read a narrative poetry. I have had this on my shelf for sometime. Not sure how long. My copy is a paperback, modern English translation by r.m. lumiansky (1948). Printing 1971. Canterbury Tales is really a collection of short stories told by a group of English pilgrims who are making the trip from a suburb of London to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury. So it is a frame story of sort. Each pilgrim was to tell 4 stories and someone was suppose to win. Written in the 1300's the stories give a cross-section of English society. England is Catholic at this time. Pilgrimages were encouraged. Maybe this explains why England is still a land of people who "walk". The Pilgrimage also accounts for the conglomeration of people that come together to tell these tales. You have Knights, Millers, Cooks, Man of Law, Prioress, Monk, Priest, Wife, Friar, Cleric, Merchants, Squires, Nun, Yeoman, etc as storytellers. The short story collection, 24 tales not all complete but these stories explore a variety of topics from moralizing, to religious, romance, bawdy. Some will seem very familiar because they have been borrowed from other sources. Chaucer wrote the works in Middle English. He did not write in Latin as was the custom, but wrote for the English people. I can't say I enjoyed all the stories but I enjoyed the fact that I read this book finally and now know what it is and I also appreciated that people were on a walk to see the shrine of Becket who I've read a bit about. Seems to fill in a spot for me.
    • 4/5
      It had a nice rhyming rhythm to listen to.The clerk's tale made me mad. Griselda's husband decides to test her. So he makes her believe he had their daughter killed. Than does the same when they have a son. He sends her back to her father with nothing. Than he announces the Pope has given permission to marry. He puts Griselda in charge of the work of getting everything ready for the wedding. Through it all she is completely faithfully and never complains or criticisms him So he realizes she is faithful so he takes her back and reveals the children are alive. And they live happily ever-after. It made me so mad that there was no bad consequences for him.The Parson's tale was a sermon of penance.
    • 4/5
      I had read excerpts, but to actually read the whole thing (in Middle English) was quite an undertaking for me. I enjoyed it quite a bit more than I expected to.
    • 3/5
      Rated: C+Fun read. Lots of interesting tales of days gone by.
    • 4/5
      Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is a classic that most high schoolers read excerpts from in high school. Burton Raffel here offers a new, full-length translation. The translation mostly succeeds (at least in oral format) as it conveys the sense of the work fairly well.

      While reading, it struck me how essentially medieval Chaucer’s setting is. While he is often talked about as one standing at the cusp of an enlightened England, his roots are thoroughly planted in the prior era. The Parson’s Tale (the final tale in the series) is based on Thomistic and Aristotelian virtues. It is less a tale and more a sermon as it is filled with admonitions and homiletic crafts. I kept waiting for a bit of irony to slip out; however, I found none. Chaucer seemed to accept the pre-Reformation theology as an inextricable part of his contemporary culture.

      Many of Chaucer’s other tales are more entertaining and more story-like. Chaucer’s characters, like the Friar or the Wife of Bath, still stick with us throughout the centuries. Indeed, he succeeds in making us feel as if we are along for the walk to Canterbury. We listen to them pass the time by their communicative skills. Listening to this book on audiobook makes this effect especially pronounced. Each character possesses a unique literary and auditory voice. The new translation helps facilitate this portrayal by removing anachronisms that roughly remind us that Chaucer wrote in middle English. It succeeds in its quest to make this great work relevant to our contemporary era.

    • 3/5
      I've just come to the conclusion that I don't have enough life left for me to be spending it wading through Chaucer in the original English version. Obviously it has paid dividends for many English Lit PhD's but for me it's hard work with little to show for the effort at the end......"Oh!...so that's what 'Wyde' means!" Well great! But I have many more books to read and not enough time left to read them. So...sorry Chaucer. I'm sending you off to the charity auction. If I'm going to read Chaucer, I think it had better be in a modernised version...it's too much like trying to read a foreign language in the original. (Though, having said that, it is interesting just how much I can understand from the original text. just wonder if it was read phonetically by a current resident of Midland England whether it would sound all that different to the current dialect). I give it 3 stars...not because it's a mediocre book but because it's not the book for me at the moment.
    • 4/5
      A wife destroys her husband and contrives,
      As husbands know, the ruin of their lives

      Much as the theme of estrangement dominates a thread of traditional songs, (see Wayfaring Stranger, Motherless Child etc) much of early Modern literature appears concerned with faithless brides and the looming spectre of cuckoldry. It is possible that I am full of shit in tall weeds, but that said, I do think that there is a link between the themes (alienation and infidelity) and that both are understood in terms of our ontological displacement. Such were my reasoned reactions to Canterbury Tales. My unreasoned ones amounted to observation: look there’s a rape, that’s a rape, that’s a pogrom, why would anyone’s daughter want to sleep with him etc, etc? I read this in translation into modern English and was impressed about the rhyme, especially between Flanders and extravagances: who can fault that? The Tales is a display of language's majesty.

      My grasp of Chaucer amounts to the author saying through his myriad voices -- much like Bill Nighy in Hitchhiker’s Guide: there really is no point, just keep busy
    • 4/5
      The Canterbury Tales is by a wide margin the best-known work of English literature from the medieval period. It's not only enshrined in the school History syllabus between Crop Rotation, Monasticism and Castles, but it's a book that many modern readers still seem to turn to for pleasure, despite the obvious difficulties caused by the linguistic and cultural distance of six centuries. I've often dipped into it pleasurably before, and I've had a copy sitting on my shelves for many years, but this is the first time I've tried a cover-to-cover read. I found the language easier to deal with than I expected - Chaucer's version of southern English is a lot more straightforward for the modern reader than the nearly contemporary Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Anyone who knows a bit of French or Latin and a bit of German or Dutch ought to be able to read it fairly easily with the help of the marginal glosses. Especially with 600 pages to practice on, you soon get the hang of what it means and a rough idea of how it sounds (I listened to an audio recording of the General Prologue for help with this). In fact, the pronunciation of Middle English is usually more logical than that of Modern English. If what's written is "knight", it makes far more sense to say cnicht (or kerniggut if you're John Cleese) than nite...Like most people, I had mixed reactions to the Tales. The bawdy ones were fun - it's always interesting to see that people enjoyed fart-jokes as much (or perhaps even more) in those days as they do now. The chivalric-romance style of several other Tales was colourful but sometimes a bit slow for modern tastes (some of the descriptions in the "Knight's Tale" seem to go on for ever), but it was revealing to see that Chaucer was well aware of that and was prepared to make fun of it in the mock-heroic "Nun's Priest's Tale" and the deliberately boring and directionless "Tale of Sir Thopas", which is supposedly being told by the poet's narrator-persona, "Chaucer", until he's cut off by the Host. There are several "high-minded" religious Tales that look as though they are meant to be taken straight - the blatantly antisemitic - "Prioress's Tale" is perhaps best ignored; the "Physician's Tale", a gruesome story about an honour-killing, is not much better, except that there at least the narrator seems to distance himself a little from the idea that it's better to kill your (innocent) daughter than risk shame attaching to her; the "Second Nun's Tale" (the gloriously over-the-top martyrdom of St Cecilia) is almost readable, but even I was forced into skimming by the "Parson's Tale", a lengthy and very dry sermon on the subject of "penance" (it does get a bit livelier when it's discussing the Seven Deadly Sins...).Probably the most interesting aspect of the Tales overall is what Chaucer has to say about the relations between men and women. Several Tales deal with this topic explicitly in various different ways, and the core of the argument is obviously in the "Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale" - she argues powerfully and directly that the world will not collapse into disorder if women are allowed to decide the course of their own lives. The "Franklin's Tale" also takes up the idea of an equitable marriage in which neither partner owes obedience to the other and presents it in a positive light. It's tempting to read something of the Chaucers' domestic situation into this, but of course we don't have the slightest bit of evidence for anything other than that Philippa Chaucer had a career of her own. We read this for its scope, vitality and colour, and for the liveliness of Chaucer's verse, which manages to jump the centuries without any problem. It's striking how we're so used to groaning and expecting dullness or difficulty when we see a passage of verse in a modern prose novel - here it's precisely the opposite; we (rightly) groan when we see the prose text of the "Parson's Tale" and the "Tale of Melibee" coming up, and are relieved when we get back to verse again...One - irrelevant - thought that struck me for the first time on this reading was to wonder how the practicalities of storytelling on horseback work out. Even on foot, it's difficult to talk to more than two or three people at once whilst walking along, and when riding you can't get as close together as you can on foot, plus you've got the noise of the horses. So I don't know how you would go about telling a story to a group of 29 riders in a way that they can all hear it. If they were riding two abreast, they would be spread out over something like 50m of road, and it's unlikely that the A2 was more than two lanes wide in the 14th century...
    • 2/5
      In honour of my late medieval studies adviser, Dr John Bugge, I figured it was time to finish reading one of his favourite books. I read it. It's a collection of stories. I am honestly still not sure what the appeal is. *And I'm a medievalist.* But I read it and now I don't feel like I have to read it again. It can go onto my bookshelves so I can feel intelligent and well read.
    • 4/5
      I could listen to and read this repeatedly and still find more to love I think.
    • 4/5
      The narrator of this audiobook bumped this book from a 3.5 to a 4 star rating. David Cutler had an excellent grasp of the Old English and helped the poetry flow smoothly. I was able to enjoy the bawdy humor and misogynistic views of womanly virtues". It is always interesting to read what was considered important in our past and Chaucer definitely wrote as a man of the times. He did occasionally get a few knocks in for the women, though. It was fun re-reading these tales now that I don't have to analyze them for a term paper."
    • 3/5
      Wow! Almost readable in original English after 660 years. Irreverent & ebullient.Read Samoa Nov 2003
    • 4/5
      While The Canterbury Tales is very well-known by its title, it is probably not that widely read. It is a collection of 20 stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century. Apart from a few exceptions these tales are written in verse. This review is based on my reading of the Modern English translation by Nevill Coghill.The Canterbury Tales are a story-telling contest by a group of people on their way from Southwark to Canterbury Cathedral: It happened in that season that one day
      In Southwark, at The Tabard, as I lay
      Ready to go on pilgrimage and start
      For Canterbury, most devout at heart,
      At night there came into that hostelry
      Some nine and twenty in a company
      Of sundry folk happening then to fall
      In fellowship, and they were pilgrims all
      That towards Canterbury meant to ride.
      (quoted from The Prologue)This "sundry folk" includes, among others, a knight, a miller, a reeve, a cook, a prioress, a monk, a clerk, a merchant, a physician, a pardoner and a parson. Probably also known to many is The Wife of Bath.As it is hard to review such a large collection of stories I will concentrate on the one that impressed me most, which was 'The Miller's Tale'. Following a story of courtly love told by the kinght, 'The Miller's Tale' relates a story of a carpenter who is fooled by his clerks who have sex with the carpenter's wife. What I especially liked about this story is the topic, which is talked about very openly for a 14th century work. What is more, the miller does a magnificent job in telling his tale after he had just told the rest of the group of pilgrims that he was drunk and not to be held acoountable for the story. 'The Miller's Tale' is followed by 'The Reeve's Tale' in which great offense is expressed at the miller's story as the reeve had been a carpenter himself once. This can be seen as an example of the structure of The Canterbury Tales: A story insulting a particular group of persons or a particular trade is usually followed by a response from the offended who tell a tale on their own to set matters right or get back at the previous speaker.While 'The Miller's Tale' is just one of many stories in The Canterbury Tales it is somewhat representative of what I liked about the book. First, there is the structure that greatly contributes to the overall reading pleasure. Second, there are the tales themselves, which are very entertaining, especially keeping in mind the fact that they were written at the end of the 14th century. To my mind, The Canterbury Tales is a classic that is still highly appealing to 21st century readers. On the whole, 4 stars for a great reading experience.
    • 5/5
      Always entertaining. I loved reading this the first time and I always enjoy going back over a tale or two for a chuckle.
    • 3/5
      I've recently read several interesting short story collections from antiquity, namely The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. Each of them has inspired enough academic articles to fill a library, so I'm not going to delve into their historical import or the ways each has influenced future literature, but I think its valuable to consider how they compare to each other in approach and how I saw them as stories.

      First, The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer's unfinished collection provides a great window into what life was like in the middle ages, more specifically England in the 1300s. By providing a diverse cast of story tellers as the vehicles for the stories themselves Chaucer is able to explore many professions and various points on the social hierarchy, satirizing and criticizing all the flaws he saw in his society. To an extent these are interesting, but social satire does not always age well. While it certainly gives you a sense of how England looked through Chaucer's eyes (a den of corruption and hypocrisy for the most part, especially when discussing the religious institutions), it can be hit or miss as to whether the critique has aged well. Critique on chivalry in The Knight's Tale? I'm in. Critique of alchemists wherein pages and pages of ingredients are listed? Yawn. Additionally, the majority of the tales aren't that deep, with many being raunchy stories of pure entertainment and others being morality tales with blatantly obvious messages (pride is bad and fortune is fickle, we get it). The message of one tale was flat out stated to be "beware of treachery." Was there someone at the time going around saying "treachery isn't that bad, don't worry about it?"

      In reverse chronological order the next up is Arabian Nights. This collection is amorphous enough that many tales pop up in one edition and not another, which in my opinion weakens the arguments I see about the collection having a set of coherent themes or messages. The sole theme that I found to be consistent was the power of storytelling- it appears in the frame narrative, of course, but also the stories themselves often showcase the ability of stories to trick the powerful, and oftentimes stories lead to sub-stories and so on, like nesting dolls. Toward the end of the collection the descriptions began to get to me: if I never see someone described as being "as beautiful as the moon" with "lips like coral" and other features like various gems I'll be a happy reader. The Norton Critical addition showed its worth by providing many additional pieces inspired by the Arabian Nights, as well as critical analyses of the text (some of which I found less than convincing, but always interesting). More so than the other two collections Arabian Nights just struck me as a bunch of stories, many of which of course were intended to edify, but mostly its purpose was to entertain. It more or less accomplished this.

      The earliest, and also the best, of the three collections was Ovid's Metamorphoses. Chaucer references the classic explicitly several times in his work, and it's no wonder: Ovid is the master that Chaucer tried and failed to match. What put this collection above the others for me was that Ovid not only had a consistent theme to the stories (transformations, as the title would suggest), but also stories flow from one to the next, mostly with an organic feeling that makes the work take on a grander scale. Ovid's not just telling stories, he's tracing the history of the world, explaining how the world became populated with the birds and plants and animals that fill it, and connecting the past all up to what was then the present day. It also serves as the source for much of what we know of Greek/Roman mythology, as Ovid was also setting down an account of the actions and behavior of the gods. Framing narratives can be used to great effect, just look at If On a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino for a phenomenal example, but Canterbury Tales creates such a framing narrative only to leave it incomplete, and Arabian Nights slowly siphons away the importance of the frame narrative until it is forgotten entirely. In comparison, Ovid's Metamorphoses connection of his tales makes his work stand on a grander scale, and makes it feel like a more coherent whole. A note on translations, I found Charles Martin's work to be very strong in general, although he makes a few bizarre choices. Translating a singing contest into a rap battle was a clear mistake. Overall, though, I feel confident recommending him so long as you want a more modern take on the text.

      All three collections have stood the test of time, and each is an essential read to understand the ages and cultures they arose out of. Between the three of them, though, Ovid's Metamorphoses is the most worthy of your time in my opinion.
    • 3/5
      From the mind-numbingly boring Monk's Tale to the spirited Wife of Bath, these tales seemed to be either really good or really dull. I was able to follow the language (for the most part) once I went through the Prologue with a fine-tooth comb looking up every unfamiliar word. After that, I had the hang of it. I'm glad I read it, but I doubt that I'll ever read it again.
    • 2/5
      Well, I finally read the complete Canterbury Tales. A few of the best known tales were enjoyable enough. But most I found dull and plodding. I had barely recovered from the interminable Tale of Melibee, when I got to the 60 page long sermon that is the Parson's Tale (not a tale at all), and which closes the book. Most literary classics I've read, I have thoroughly enjoyed. This was not among them.
    • 5/5
      This beautiful old volume was sadly printed in the worst of times. Even though I've been careful in its storage, and in handling, the dreaded acidity is catching up with the paper. I imagine that in perhaps another 50 years, the pages will be completely yellowed and crumbly, and it'll be gone. This volume is written in the original English (the East Midland dialect, according to Untermeyer's excellent introduction) of the day, with an excellent glossary at the end (but beginning, I suspect, to be less than helpful, nearly 100 years after publication).His stories give insight into the day to day lives of people in his time (the 1300s), and he wrote in a manner that is still lively and readable today.
    • 3/5
      Read in a Penguin Classics translation from the 50s, this is a re-read for me. I last read this approaching 20 years ago when I needed distracting on a long haul flight. And having read it again, I can see why it did it's job! It's not exactly an easy read, it demands attention and concentration - no skimming here. but it rewards the attention with some classic pieces of story telling. The concept was enormous, each of the pilgrims (and there are approaching 30 identified) were to tell two tales. He didn't even get as far as one tale each, the work remains unfinished, but some of the stories are just sparkling studies of human nature even now. A lot of the stories are relayed as if the pilgrim is telling a story they have heard elsewhere, so a lot of them can be traced to other sources - there's little in the narrative arc that is original. What is all Chaucer is the linking passages, the representation of all of life in one group. They are a mixture of positions in life and it is noticeable that the ladies represented in the group and in the tales tend to be very strong females - very few shrinking violets here. For his time, that strikes me as noticeable. The introduction, when the pilgrims are introduces, could be (with a little tweaking) any group of random strangers you could gather together today. OK, there are a few more religious job titles then than now (they'd be bankers or management consultants now) but they're such an assorted bunch that they seem to spring to life as you read. I think that's part of the charm, this is the English at the birth of a national consciousness - these are my people, this is part of what makes us who we are.
    • 5/5
      I love the Canterbury Tales. I took an entire class dedicated to the study of this beautiful piece of work. What I love about this collection of tales is that there is something for everyone; tons of dirty humor, some love stories, tragic stories, morality stories, animal fables, a satire on chivalry tales, poetry...

      There are over 20 individual stories, some that were unfortunately left unfinished. Each tale is told by a different person in this group of pilgrims making their way to Canterbury Cathedral. They are all from different walks of life; there is a Knight, a squire, a scholar, a prioress, a priest, a pardoner, etc. They decide to tell stories in order to pass the time as they travel.

      For those who are not used to Middle English is that you can read one at a time and/or skip around (after you read the General Prologue), and though you may miss a few things about the actual pilgrimage (some of the story tellers argue and whatnot), the tales themselves are still very enjoyable.

      I suggest finding a copy that has both the original spelling and the Middle English spelling in order to enjoy the full impact of the language even if you are not a Middle English expert.

      It is a delightful collection of tales! I wish more people would read and enjoy them!
    • 5/5
      The pleasure of this book lies in the double bonus of the ever green stories of Chaucer together with the wonderful selection of illustrations drawn from contemporary, medieval illuminated manuscripts. I know that Cresset is a publisher for the mass market but this edition is particularly attractive and I think very collectable. There is an excellent introduction by John Wain and an apposite foreword by Melvyn Bragg while the text is Chaucer but with old English given an understandable and very readable translation by the great Chaucer authority, Nevill Coghill. This particular volume is not a text for university study but is a volume for pleasurable and bedtime reading. It returns me to the humour and the wisdom of Chaucer and reminds me that there are so many English expression from Chaucer which we still use today - for example, keeping mum, or many a true word said in jest, or rotten apples spoiling all in the barrel. We are reminded of the richness of the English language, the debt we owe to Chaucer and the freshness of these 14th century tales. This particular edition is worth acquiring ( readily available) and adding to one's book treasures. It is a very beautiful book. The illustrations are well matched to the text and repay close study. If you have never read Chaucer or if you read Chaucer as a chore, take another look and give yourself the treat of a classic of literature in a lovely format.
    • 5/5
      Oh, the treasure of finding and holding a shopworn copy of Chaucer's tales in my hands is just too much for words. His tales are not just downright funny, but they can be applied even today to the people we work with, live with, and play with on a daily basis. In fact, I kept laughing every time I read another tale that was a ringer for someone I knew. The classics hold up well, don't they?


      Book Season = Sping ("when the sweet showers of April fall and shoot")
    • 4/5
      Fun reads but a bit eclectic in a chaotic sense.
    • 5/5
      Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales consists of a collection of stories framed as being told during a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral. Each in this company of about 30 pilgrims is to tell a tale on the journey there--the one judged to have told the best to get a free meal. In structure, and sometimes even in the content of the stories, this resembles the Italian Decameron by Boccaccio, written over a century before which Chaucer probably read. One of the differences is that while the Decameron is prose, most of The Canterbury Tales is in verse. But I think what really distinguishes it in my mind is the cross-section of English Medieval society Chaucer presents. Boccacio's storytellers were young members of Florence nobility, Chaucer on the other hand has people from all levels of society: a knight and his squire, a prioress, friar, parson, canon, priests, nuns and a monk, various professions, tradesmen and artisans, a merchant, cook, physician etc. Each tale has a content and style that matches the teller. The most memorable passages to me are the little portraits of the various pilgrims, especially the Wife of Bath. Which is not to say the individual stories don't have their pleasures; some are dull and long-winded, but quite a few are vivid, funny, and/or bawdy. I especially remember "The Shipman's Tale" with its pun on "double entry" bookkeeping, and "The Knight's Tale" was adapted by Shakespeare into Two Noble Kinsman. Purists and scholars will want to suffer through Chaucer's original Middle English. It can, with difficulty and frustration, be made out by the modern reader. Here's the opening:Whan that aprill with his shoures sooteThe droghte of march hath perced to the roote,And bathed every veyne in swich licourOf which vertu engendred is the flour;Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breethInspired hath in every holt and heethTendre croppes, and the yonge sonneHath in the ram his halve cours yronne,And smale foweles maken melodye,That slepen al the nyght with open ye(so priketh hem nature in hir corages);Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimagesMore power to you if you choose to do so. But if you're looking to enjoy yourself and read with understanding without constantly referring to footnotes, sacrilege though it may be, you might want to try one of the translations into Modern English such as those by Nevill Coghill, Colin Wilcockson or David Wright.
    • 5/5
      I suppose this is my own Ulysses. Canterbury Tales is certainly one of those books, like Ulysses or Proust or Golden Bowl, that no one's actually read or if they have they hated it or if they didn't they're lying because they think it'll impress you. But I took a whole class on this in college and I had this terrific professor, and she showed me how awesome this is. Really, it's a heap of fun. Are you impressed?
    • 4/5
      Mark Twain said something like: "Classics are books you think you ought to read, but never do." Well, I am glad I put in the hours to listen to this book, but I cannot say I enjoyed much of it. Partially, it was the narration--some of the accents used were simply impossible--and partially it was boredom that set in when discussing theology that is so far from my own. Still, it is part of the "canon" and as such, it is good to be a bit more literate today than I was yesterday....
    • 4/5
      This is a wonderful book. It took me some time to get into the book, because I am not that used anymore to this style of writing. However, when you get into the meat of the book, you will be amazed at the amazing variety of styles in the book. There are a multitude of characters. The stories cover a wide range, from the raunchy to the spiritual, to the boring. The style in which each story is told matches the story teller, and matches the story. It is astounding to come across such range in one book. Apart from the sheer brilliance of the writing, I think the book does give us a glimpse into the England of the times. This book is a must read
    • 5/5
      This is a very approachable translation of The Canterbury Tales. Many of my students still struggle with reading Chaucer in translation (at least with the translation in our anthology); however, this translation seems more approachable for my college students.

    Book preview

    The Canterbury Tales (NHB Modern Plays) - Geoffrey Chaucer

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