Yawn,another surefire cure for insomnia.

Why must they teach it,given that the language is so archaic ? And the content,it's not all that great either. Really tested my patience.

This might be not only the worst translation of Chaucer, but the worst translation of anything ever written.

First of all, there shouldn't be translations of Chaucer. Much of Chaucer's meaning comes through the language he uses. Take away the language, and what's left is no longer Chaucer. I can see an argument for translating Chaucer into German, French, Italian, Tagalog, whatever. But into Modern English--that's insulting.

If you can't read Chaucer's Middle English, just skip The Canterbury Tales. If you really REALLY want to read it, struggle with the Middle English for about an hour. After that, you'll be fine. I'd highly recommend either the Riverside Chaucer (complete works in a scholarly edition) or the Norton Critical text of the Tales, which has marginal glosses and footnotes to explain the meanings of words and provide historical information.

It's frustrating, though, when a translation is so far from the original meaning of the text that it seems the translator is really writing his or her own poem. This was what was frustrating about Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf and Simon Armitage's of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Here, though, there was at least some system in place, an overriding philosophy dictating the changes each translator made to his text. Raffel seems to just delight in misleading the reader. Take the opening lines. Chaucer wrote, "Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote, / The droughte of March hath perced to the roote." Famous lines. Raffel's rendering: "When April arrives, and with his sweetned showers / Drenches dried-up roots, gives them power." No mention of March; "dried-up" hardly conveys the same sense as "drought." Later on, Raffel describes the Squire as having "ridden with his father, on cavalry raids / In Flanders, Artois, and Picardy." Chaucer does not say that the Squire rode with his father, the Knight, on any campaigns at all. In fact, the battles fought by the Knight and Squire contrast--where the Knight had ridden on Crusades, the Squire had taken part in the Hundred Years' War. This important piece of characterization is entirely omitted in Raffel's translation.

Anything worth doing is worth taking time over. Chaucer's language is worth learning. This type of short-cut is a travesty. If you're reading it for pleasure, be aware that you're NOT reading Chaucer; if you're reading it in class, transfer to another class--your professor doesn't know what he's doing.

Chaucer’s pilgrims are a rum lot! Most seem to be flymen, ready to make a fast buck at the expense of others. Chaucer’s own presence amongst the pilgrims is interesting but he is there more as a bystander than a participant.

How is it possible to give such a seminal work a star rating? My 4 stars reflects my own response to it. I was sometimes bored, sometimes amused, sometimes engrossed in the tales and nearly always entertained. The work itself seems unfinished, however. I’m not a Chaucer scholar so mine is only a layperson’s view. At the beginning, the Host says he will judge the contest and the winner will be given a free supper on their return to London. The contest is never judged though and so we don’t know the outcome. In fact, we don’t enter Canterbury with them at the end.

Many of the tales have a moral lesson, generally to do with women cuckolding their husbands or sweethearts, or about men trying to control their women, usually to their own detriment. The Wife of Bath, she of the five husbands, explains the ways of women to the company (Harvard translation):

We women have, if I shall not lie,
In this matter a curious fantasy:
Note that whatever thing we may not easily have,
We will cry all day and crave for it.
Forbid us a thing, and we desire it;
Press on us fast, and then will we flee.

Many of the tales that follow demonstrate that most men are bewildered by the desires of women. 700 years and no progress!

Another theme running through the tales is the wealth, abuse of power, and corruption of the Church and its clerics. The sale of false relics and indulgences was rife and is the basis of the Pardoner’s Tale. A Pardoner sold indulgences on behalf of the church, ie pardons for sins to those who have repented in return for a donation. In his prologue, he says,

For my intention is only to make a profit,
And not at all for correction of sin.
I care not a bit, when they are buried,
Though their souls go picking blackberries!

He finishes by offering the company indulgences, suggesting that the Host goes first as he is the most sinful. The Host replies,

Thou would make me kiss thine old underpants,
And swear it was a relic of a saint,
Though it were stained by thy fundament!

What he goes on to say isn’t something I care to share on Goodreads!

I learned quite a lot about medieval times and I’m pleased to have finally read the entire work. I read it online at the excellent Harvard Geoffrey Chaucer website. The translation at times left a little to be desired but was easy enough to follow and I enjoyed being able to read the original lines simultaneously. I made copious notes about each tale and I’m sure I will return to them time and again.

Nearly medieval porn. Back when men were beasts and women were chattel. Like today, but all the cosmetics and grammar are stripped raw. Forced to read this in college. Can't forget it. Not necessarily enjoyable, but pure historical power.

Before the beginning of each school year at Maine Township High School South we students had to go to pick up our books at the gymnasium ahead of time. Prior to the senior year I went alone and was very excited by the required texts. Having finished all my state requirements for graduation, I was only taking advanced placement courses and the texts were all college level.

One of them was Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' in the original, albeit with copious notes. The middle English was daunting, but, inspired, I endeavored to read the thing before the start of classes. Fortunately, Mother, raised with Norwegian as her natal tongue and German as her language of instruction, found Chaucerian English pretty easy, so, with her help I was able to get through the text. (A lot of the problem of reading middle English is solved if you just learn to sound it out and then read it aloud).

Then, with the beginning of classes, we got into the Chaucer. One of the first things we were told was to buy a version of 'Canterbury Tales' translated into modern English at the bookstore...

5 stars for the performance, not for the absolute classic of English literature lol. I liked the voice actors and thought they each brought the tales to life. Listening to this was much easier than reading it for me

I don't think I've ever felt more humbled while reading a book. Of course I had read some of these tales as a schoolboy, but really hadn't the education to understand what I was reading. Chaucer's characters are so varied in style and spirit, yet with great ease manage to drop references from Solomon to Ovid, Catullus to Cato, Boethius to Dante and sometimes all within a single paragraph.

How can it be that some fellow from the Dark Ages could be better read than my modern self? How is it possible, without the printing press (not to mention Kindle, Google and the Internets), that Chaucer was able to recall a dozen different supporting quotations from writers and philosophers from through the ages in defense of nearly any argument his characters might make?

There are few writers that create simultaneously high-brow and low-brow humour and Chaucer masters this cause from cover to cover. To call this work a masterpiece is an understatement. It is the masterpiece of English literature. It is the one book that I would give 6 stars or more if only there were more to give.

English literature is downhill from Chaucer. Even as a Shakespeare scholar, I would argue this, since there are several characters in Chaucer who are as if live: The Wif of Bath, the Pardoner, the Host, the Canon's Yeoman, and a half dozen others, at least. Shakespeare's characters, on the other hand, are all stagey, bigger than life, infused with the stage. Or so it seems to me. Chaucer's Wif even makes colloquial grammar mistakes when she self-consciously describes what men like about women's bodies, such as "hire [their] armes smalle." (I infer that the Wif's arms may not be small, typically a self-critical woman.)

Various characters display their human failings just like someone you meet in a bar, or at a family picnic: the Miller, in his prolog, "That I am drunke, I know it by my soun," then philosophizes, "An housband shall not been inquisitif/ Of goddes privite, nor of his wife." One of the best heroic couplets in all of English lit. Another philosopher is cut down to size by the Host; when Osewold the Reeve begs off telling a tale, "But ik am oold, me list not play for age," the Host replies,"What shul we speke alday of hooly writ?/ The devel made a reve for to preche."
Chaucer is outright, laugh-aloud funny, even in describing himself. The Host remarks how Chaucer as a pilgrim is staring at the ground while riding (shy?) and that he has a pot-belly like the Host himself. Chaucer gives himself the worst of the CT; he tells a memorized tale, which the Host interrupts as he would now interrupt rap, "This may we be rym doggerel"--this is doggerel!
As for Chaucer's superiority to all of English lit that follows, I would argue the same for Erasmus and H.S. education: Erasmus's Colloquiae, especially his Adulescens et Scortum, puts modern education books to shame. He wrote it for adolescent males, to teach them Latin, and it does this with a discussion between a young prostitute and her friend, a (High School-age) boy who's just been to Rome and reformed. She, "most men who go to Rome get worse." He, "no, no I read this pious author." "Who?" "Erasmus..." She, "Erasmus! I heard he is an arch-heretic..." He, "Who'd you hear that from." She, "Oh, one of my clients...a priest."

Admonition: Both Chaucer and Erasmus write essentially in a foreign language, the Middle English of
1390 being much closer to French--which in fact was used in Courts of Law in England for yet another century. Its traces remain: "defendant, attorney, assizes, voir dire," etc.

When confronted with the painful choice of whether or not to read Chaucer in the original Middle English, I agonised for precisely four seconds and decided to read Nevill Coghill’s modern translation in lovely Penguin paperback. In the same way I wouldn’t learn German to read Goethe, or unlearn English to read Dan Brown, I refuse to learn archaic forms of English for pointless swotty scholar-points, and grope instead for selfish readerly pleasure, two-fingering the purists and bunking down with Mr. Nevill for nights of sumptuous moral homily, proto-feminist romantic comedy, and high courtly drama. For Chaucer neophytes like me, this text captures the bouncy humour and devilish cleverness of the original (not that I would know!), and hopefully will turn a generation of frightened and unenlightened readers on to this master of verse. (And if you must know, my rhyming homage review was lost due to a power failure and a more tempting invitation to eat pilaf rice with Brian. Street children! Wives of Bath! Go forth and Chaucerize!)

I don't know what to add to the mountain of criticism about this book other than a few scattered impressions. First, Chaucer really knew how to tell a good yarn! And the poetry and prose are of course unparalleled, even in a modern English translation. This compendium of stories has everything you could want: adventure, drama, sex, gender politics, humor. It shows women lustily enjoying sex outside of marriage without guilt or punishment, and it's very even-handed as to giving both men and women a say in the war of the sexes, something Chaucer may have picked up from Boccaccio (about a quarter of his tales are lifted directly from The Decameron). The Wife of Bath's Tale in particular stands out as a strong female voice at a time when women were rarely given the chance to express themselves in writing, and were widely condemned as stupid, morally incontinent, and evil in the writings of men (something Christine de Pizan lamented about bitterly a few decades later in The Book of the City of Ladies).

I really loved The Knight's Tale too—such a satisfying drama of two friends fighting for the same woman—and the various bawdy stories, so beautifully depicted by Pasolini in his titular film. Even in the Parson's Tale at the end, which is just one long sermon, Chaucer takes an opportunity to hilariously paint amusing and colorful pictures such as this for the reader:

As to the first sin, that is in superfluity of clothing, which makes it so dear, to the harm of the people; not only the cost of embroidering, the ostentatious notching or ornamenting with bars, undulating stripes, vertical stripes, folding or decorative borders, and similar waste of cloth in vanity, but there is also costly fur trimming in their gowns, so much punching with chisels to make holes, so much slitting with shears; immediately the superfluity in length of the aforesaid gowns, trailing in the dung and in the mire, on horse and also on foot, as well of man as of woman, that all this trailing cloth is truly in effect wasted, consumed, threadbare, and rotten with dung, rather than it is given to the poor, to great damage of the aforesaid poor folk. And that in various ways; this is to say that the more that cloth is wasted, the more must it cost to the people for the scarceness. And furthermore, if it so be that they would give such ornamentally punched and artfully slitted clothing to the poor folk, it is not convenient to wear for their estate, nor sufficient to allay their necessity, to keep them from the bad weather of the heavens. Upon that other side, to speak of the horrible excessive scantiness of clothing, as are these coats cut short, or short jackets, that through their shortness do not cover the shameful members of man, to wicked intent. Alas, some of them show the bulge of their shape, and the horrible swollen members, that it seems like the malady of hernia, in the wrapping of their leggings; and also the buttocks of them fare as it were the back part of a she-ape in the full of the moon. And moreover, the wretched swollen members that they show through their style of clothing, in parting of their hoses into white and red, seems that half their shameful private members were flayed. And if so be that they divide their hoses in other colors, as is white and black, or white and blue, or black and red, and so forth, then seems it, as by variance of color, that half the part of their private members were corrupt by the fire of Saint Anthony (inflammation of the skin), or by cancer, or by other such mischance. Of the back part of their buttocks, it is very horrible to see. For certainly, in that part of their body where they purge their stinking excrement, that foul part show they to the people proudly in scorn of decency, which decency that Jesus Christ and his friends observed to show in their lives.

But I have to admit, the part of this excellent poem that amazed me the most was The Summoner's Prologue and Tale. I knew the scene and visuals from the spectacular Pasolini movie, where red and purple devils are farting friars into the air, but it's even better when you read about how the devil literally farts 20,000 friars out of his asshole, and they scurry about for a while and then all crawl back up in there! That's a dream sequence from the prologue, but the story part is even better. Now, I don't consider myself a connoisseur, an expert, or even an especial fan of fart humor; but the story of how a man farted on a friar's hand when asked for a donation, and how the friar ran up to the castle to complain, and how to take the piss out of him the lords deliberated about how to divide the fart into twelve parts because the friar had insisted that any donation made to him must be shared among his colleagues, had me laughing so hard I nearly fell over! Highly recommended.

I've read this book years ago and really enjoyed it but forgot to update after joining GR so I'm adding it now. I can't wait to reread The Canterbury Tales in the future and also try out Geoffry Chaucer's other works.

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