The Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey Chaucer
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Book Summary Information
Author: Geoffrey ChaucerBrand: Penguin Group USA
Translator: Nevill Coghill
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-02-04
ISBN: 0140424385
Number of pages: 528
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780140424386
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Canterbury Tales
Book Review: Still in print after some 500 years...
Summary: 5 Stars
Most people probably associate "The Canterbury Tales" with stuffy hoary old English professors and musty craggy libraries. It doesn't help that many english classes assign the Middle English text to students. Though the original language of the Tales doesn't present insurmountable difficulties for the modern English reader, many may find the task daunting nonetheless and completely miss out on all of the good stuff. This edition presents the tales in modern verse (while still maintaining the rhyming couplet form of the original). Numerous footnotes also illuminate the vocabulary of Chaucer's time (he worked on the tales from around 1387 up to his death in 1400).
The tales trace the path of a group of pilgrims from the "The Tabard" Inn in Southwark, England to just outside the town of Canterbury. A host of interesting 14th century characters all agree to ride to the shrine of the martyr together. The host of the Inn decides to join them and makes things interesting with a contest: the person that tells the best tale along the way gets a free supper upon their return. The rest of the book then consists of twenty-four tales (Chaucer had planned over two hundred, but never finished the project) each told by a specific person linked by comments of the company. Thanks to his position as a foreign diplomat, Chaucer probably found inspiration from Bocaccio's "Decameron" (written around 1350) in the structure of this work.
In the tales themselves, the culture of 14th century England comes alive. Not only that, great stories unfold. The Knight's tale, one of the longest, explores painful medieval love. Two brothers, Arcite and Palamon, in ancient Greece spot a beautiful woman, Emily, from their jail cell. They both declare their undying love for her, and vouch their lives to winning her hand. And since both men want her the two of course turn from loyal brothers into mortal enemies. With some strange luck and the help of the gods, one of them eventually triumphs.
Some of the pilgrims don't get along too well. The Miller and the Reeve almost attack each other after hurling insults back and forth. The Miller tells a hilarious tale about Nicholas the Gallant who wants to sleep with an old carpeter's young gorgeous wife. He convinces the old man that another flood (akin to Noah's) is pending, and that he should sleep in a bathtub on top of his house. The old man buys the story, and Nicholas sets to his task. Another wooer of the young woman disrupts the couple, and ends up a victim of flatulence (but the giver of the stink ends up even worse). Since the carpenter was depicted as a fool in the tale, and the Reeve is a carpenter, he counter attacks with a tale about a stupid miller.
The tales weave incredibly diverse stories. Some end in tragedy (e.g., the Physician's Tale in which a noble Knight must choose between turning his beautiful virtuous daughter over to a corrupt and lecherous judge or killing her out of respect for her honor), some in comedy. Others relate miracles or demonstrate a simple moral point. Yet others show the prejudices of the time, (the Prioress' Tale contains some nasty anti-semitism) or the fashions of the time (the Canon's Yeoman's Tale declares alchemy a fraud). At least one has a surprising feminist bent (The Wife of Bath's Tale, although 14th century values ultimately win out). Some of the more comical characters are the wards of the 14th century Church: the Pardoner, the Summoner, the Friar, and the Monk. All of them get depicted as hopelessly corrupt and hypocritical (in that they don't practice what they preach while having scruples about profiting from their church offices; corruption in the church was a fiery issue of the day).
Two of the original prose tales, Chaucer's tale of Melibee and the Parson's tale, only appear in summary here. Chaucer's first tale gets rudely interrupted by the host who complains that "Your dreary rhyming isn't worth a turd!" Whether the character called "Chaucer" (the narrator in many sections) actually represented Chaucer himself remains controversial. The Parson's tale, the last in this book, reflects on the Seven Deadly Sins. Chaucer's "Retraction" appears directly afterwards. In this he excuses himself for any sin he may have committed in this book. So are the Canturbury tales supposed to be meditations on the sinful and sinless life? Since Chaucer didn't complete the project such questions remain somewhat speculatory (also, Chaucer didn't actually write most of the tales himself - this is a collection of tales mosty from other sources in the manner popular at the time - but he did rewrite them with his own vision in mind). What the Canterbury Tales ended up as, nonetheless, is a collection of romantic, baudy, raucous, tragic, and vastly entertaining stories that gorgeously reflect and effectively evoke Chaucer's times. This, maybe more than anything, helps explain why the book has seen continual publication since the fifteenth century.
Summary of The Canterbury Tales
With their astonishing diversity of tone and subject matter, The Canterbury Tales have become one of the touchstones of medieval literature. Translated here into modern English, these tales of a motley crowd of pilgrims drawn from all walks of life?from knight to nun, miller to monk?reveal a picture of English life in the fourteenth century that is as robust as it is representative.
@AprilFools Oh and the Wyfe of Bathe. Talk about a woman who likes to be perced to the roote.
From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less
On a spring day in April--sometime in the waning years of the 14th century--29 travelers set out for Canterbury on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett. Among them is a knight, a monk, a prioress, a plowman, a miller, a merchant, a clerk, and an oft-widowed wife from Bath. Travel is arduous and wearing; to maintain their spirits, this band of pilgrims entertains each other with a series of tall tales that span the spectrum of literary genres. Five hundred years later, people are still reading Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. If you haven't yet made the acquaintance of the Franklin, the Pardoner, or the Squire because you never learned Middle English, take heart: this edition of the Tales has been translated into modern idiom.
From the heroic romance of "The Knight's Tale" to the low farce embodied in the stories of the Miller, the Reeve, and the Merchant, Chaucer treated such universal subjects as love, sex, and death in poetry that is simultaneously witty, insightful, and poignant. The Canterbury Tales is a grand tour of 14th-century English mores and morals--one that modern-day readers will enjoy.
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