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.

IF I HAD TO SPEND AN ENTIRE SEMESTER STUDYING THE MAN OF LAW'S TALE WITH A NANOWRIMO'S WORTH OF ESSAYS DEDICATED TO IT THEN I'M PUTTING THIS BOOK ON MY GOODREADS SHELF (don't worry I'll leave the date empty until I actually read the rest of the tales).
I am leaving a portion (since there are character limitations) of my Man of Law's final paper for you to view and become irrevocably entranced and inspired by. To a fellow student who may be reading this, please don't copyright. But feel free to take quotations/ideas. I hope this will serve as a help to your class, should you so happen to be writing about the Man of Law's tale. This essay is probably the messiest and most frustrating thing I had to write, so far in my university career. And I don't even agree with everything I wrote. This Goodreads review is a testament of the blood, sweat, and tears I gave to this bloody class:

EMBRACING THE DIVINE FEMININE IN CHAUCER’S MAN OF LAW’S TALE

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Man of Law’s tale sets forth a variety of religious themes that have sparked significant discussion about Constance’s nature and the deeper symbolism embodied in her character. Chaucer writes Constance as a symbol of the Divine Feminine, a term used to describe feminine aspects of character that are associated with values such as creation, community, spirituality, empathy, and intuition. Constance’s character, particularly her redeeming devotion to God amidst hardship, is reminiscent of the feminine aspects of Jesus Christ, who is paradoxically one of the greatest examples of the Divine Feminine. By symbolically likening the sufferings of Constance to that of Christ, Chaucer gives license to his readers to interpret the Man of Law’s tale as a story of achieving spiritual transcendence through embracing the attributes of the Divine Feminine.
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales during the time when the Catholic Church was the preeminently powerful institution in medieval English society. The Church had become so politically and economically powerful that its clerics, who should have been focused on spirituality and the salvation of souls, focused instead on temporality and the salvation of the state. These clerical leaders forfeited their spiritual power by cleaving to secular masculinity and failing to embrace the Divine Feminine.
Chaucer consistently lampoons clergymen as hypocrites and liars throughout The Canterbury Tales. In his masterwork, Chaucer satirically attempts to draw attention to the corruption of the Church with the apparent intention of promoting reform within the Church. Specifically, Chaucer uses his Man of Law’s tale, particularly through the character of Constance, to highlight the transcendent spiritual power that has been lost by the Church as a result of its devotion to secular power structures and rejection of the Divine Feminine. This essay will discuss how Constance’s character serves as a mediatory, Christ-like figure who inspires the type of spiritual transcendence that is only available by embracing and emulating the feminine qualities that Christ embodied. By so doing, Constance presents a pattern for corrupt clergymen to escape the corrupting influences of secular institutions that plagued the Catholic Church of his day by rejecting masculine power structures and embracing the Divine Feminine.
Chaucer employs Constance’s character arc and personal journey to illustrate the necessity of separating oneself from secular power structures in order to obtain spiritual power. After the assassination of many of her Christian people, Constance is forced to flee into the wilderness. While she is cast out from society and separated from institutional Christianity, Constance faces a variety of trials that compel her to call upon God and search for spiritual guidance. Constance places her trust in the Lord and submits herself fully to Christ’s power and will when she exclaims, “But Crist, that starf for our redempcioun / So yeve me grace his heestes to fulfille!” (Chaucer, 283-284). Constance’s willingness to submit to God’s will and suffer for a cause greater than herself is a similitude of Christ’s willingness to drink the bitter cup and save mankind through His sufferings.
Chaucer uses Constance as a symbolic Christ-like figure who embraces the redemptive suffering of the Divine Feminine for the benefit of her Christian community. As presented in The Gospel According to Saint John, Christ was the spiritual embodiment of the Divine Feminine. He was nurturing, meek, submissive, humble, and full of love as he suffered the will of the Father in all things. The character of Constance is likewise nurturing, meek, submissive, humble, and full of love as she experiences a host of trials set forth in the Man of Law’s tale. Christ was persecuted by the Pharisees and Sadducees as He went about teaching the gospel. Similarly, Constance was persecuted on account of her Christianity by pagans. Christ’s teachings were motivated by a devotion to God and a love for mankind. Constance too was motivated by her devotion to God and love for others. Christ saves mankind from sin and death through His redemptive sufferings. Likewise, Constance’s sufferings ultimately lead to the redemptive conversion of the pagans. Thus, by mirroring Christ’s feminine attributes in the character of Constance, Chaucer symbolically highlights the need to embrace the Divine Feminine in order to obtain spiritual power.

SKIPPED MIDDLE PORTION TO GET TO CRAP CONCLUSION

Constance’s story is Chaucer’s way of expressing how the purest and sincerest forms of spirituality, in this case the Divine Feminine, are manifested within individuals only after they separate themselves from corrupt groups that inhibit personal spiritual flourishing. Thus, Chaucer’s essential critique of the medieval clergy is that one can come closer to God by moving farther away from the institutional Church. However, the path to spiritual power is a difficult one. Indeed, in Constance’s symbolic life path, individual spiritual flourishing only comes through the path of personal suffering.
Although Chaucer appears to advocate for obtaining spiritual power by embracing the Divine Feminine, Pragna Patel seems to argue that only secular institutional changes can bring about feminine flourishing. In her United Nations Presentation, Patel specifically advocates for structural changes that will assist women and remove the misogyny and discrimination that is placed upon them. Patel seems to disagree with Constance’s path to spiritual power through submissive suffering. Patel appears to argue that Constance’s suffering is not a manifestation of her deep connection to God and her embrace of the Divine Feminine, but instead indicates the deep systemic issue of discrimination against women and their intersectional identities. In conceptualizing the intersectionality of feminine identity, Patel states, “It specifically addresses the manner in which racism, patriarchy, economic disadvantages, and other discriminatory systems contribute to create layers of inequality that structures the relative positions of women and men, races and other groups.” With respect to Constance’s intersectional identity, Patel would probably argue that Constance’s identity as a Christian woman, during the time of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, is what place Constance at a disadvantage in her society. Specifically, in the pagan land, Constance becomes a target for oppression because of her female identity and because of her Christian identity.
Although Patel and Chaucer seem to agree that the separation of Church and State is necessary, their approaches and end goals are markedly different. Patel essentially calls for the use of secular power structures to separate Church and State for the purpose of removing institutional barriers, particularly religious and cultural barriers, to equality of the sexes. On the other hand, Chaucer calls for the embrace of the Divine Feminine for the purpose of moving the Church away from secular power structures for the purpose of refocusing the clergy on its spiritual mission and restoring the spiritual power of the Church. Both approaches seek to combat a certain form of corruption, but they seek the separation of church and state for markedly different purposes.
The question remains as to which form of change is the most readily achievable and the most likely to bring about human flourishing. Fortunately, these two approaches are not mutually exclusive. Patel’s vision of separation of church and state for the purpose of promoting equality of the sexes is not necessarily in tension with Chaucer’s separation of church and state for the purpose of obtaining increased spiritual power. Patel’s approach seeks to remove outward oppression and free the body. Chaucer’s approach seeks to remove internal oppression and free the soul. One thing is clear, the separation of church and state is necessary for human flourishing to occur. Embracing the Divine Feminine is a good place to start.

Works Cited (for this particular portion) I don't even care if these citations are not entirely correct. I'm so tired.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Man of Law’s Introduction, Prologue, and Tale.” The Canterbury Tales, edited by V.A. Kolve and Glending Olson, 3rd Norton Critical Edition, 2018, pp. 99-129.
Patel, Pragna. “Notes on Gender and Racial Discrimination: An urgent need to integrate an intersectional perspective to the examination and development of policies, strategies and remedies for gender and racial equality.” 2016.
The Bible. Authorized King James Version, Cambridge UP, 2004.

THE THING THAT PISSED ME THE MOST ABOUT THIS PAPER WAS THAT I WAS SUPPOSED TO INCLUDE PRAGNA PATEL'S UN PRESENTATION ABOUT INTERSECTIONALITY IN MY CRITIQUE (which I didn't know about) WHEN I FELT I WAS GOING IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT DIRECTION. IT WASN'T UNTIL THE NIGHT BEFORE I WAS SUPPOSED TO SUBMIT THIS STORMING CREMLING OF A PAPER (the day I am writing this 12/8/2020) THAT I HAD TO INCORPORATE SOMETHING NOT IN MY ORIGINAL IDEA. SO I TOTALLY FELT LIKE I WAS GRASPING AT STRAWS BUT THANK GOODNESS I SLIPPED BY JUST BARELY. ALSO THANK YOU MOM AND DAD FOR ALL YOUR HELP. THESE CAPS ARE OBNOXIOUS AND I'M SORRY IT'S FINE I'M FINE I JUST WANT TO SCREAM INTO THE VOID.

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of twenty-four tales which is set as tales told by a group of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury Cathedral in Kent from Southwark Cathedral in London to pay homage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett. The group includes Chaucer as a pilgrim, and he narrates the stories told by other pilgrims including the two tales told by him on the journey.

The storytellers represent different classes in the English society of the time. Through them, Chaucer painted a faithful picture of the lives, attitudes, and morals of various social classes and types of people in medieval England. Chaucer had been a civil servant and had been in the King's service as the controller of customs, justice of the peace, and clerk of the King's work. These government positions must have brought him in direct touch with the commoners of different classes which later influenced him in his tales.

The tales were written in Middle English which was the language of the Anglo-Saxon laypeople. The language of authority and nobility at the time (following the Norman Conquest) was French and the scholarly language was Latin. In such a setting, Chaucer chose Middle English to write his tales. It may be that he wanted his stories to reach the common public, or it also may be that he wanted to promote the commoner's language.

The tales touch on the themes of marital relationships, adultery, chivalry, greed, morals, and religion. Chaucer is ironic and critical on these themes, but at times, his irony was lost on me. The writing is witty and humorous for the most part, but surprisingly, I also found it to be lewd. By modern standards, most of the tales are gross and offensive. But I learned that medieval England culture was relatively coarse in comparison with today. (That was a relief! Also made me want to revisit Voltaire's Candide).

Most of the tales were fun to read (despite a few boring ones), and there were some tales I enjoyed very much, like Knight's Tale (which is my favourite out of all), The Clerk's Tale, The Merchant's Tale, The Shipman's Tale, The Franklin's Tale and the Wife of Bath's Tale . Overall, however, the collection fell short of my expectations.

ما أسعدها تجربة مع جيفري تشوسر!
مجموعة حكايات رواها المؤلف على لسان بعض الحجاج
المتجهين لمقبرة القديس توماس آ بيكيت
استوحى تشوسر حكاياته من أعلام الشعر الإيطالي مثل جيوفاني بوكاتشيو والفرنسي مثل جيوم دي لوريس وجان دي مون
كما استعار بعض الأنماط القصصية التي عرفت في فرنسا باسم ال fabiliau أو الأقصوصة الشعرية. وجاءت حكاية الطبيب من كتاب التاريخ الروماني لتايتوس ليفيوس.
تنوعت الحكايات ما بين القصص الشعبي و الميثولوجيا الإغريقية وقصص الوعظ ولاشك أن ما أضفاه تشوسر على الحكايات جعلها تستحق مكانتها بين كتب التراث العالمي

The Canterbury Tales accompanied me through the fever-filled final days of 2019. It must have been my fourth or fifth attempt at reading it. Previous endeavors ended simply because reading 500 pages in Middle English is too time-consuming. In order to avoid this pitfall, I picked David Wright’s 1985 translation (Oxford University Press, 2011) that had inhabited my bookshelf for several years, as has the original-language tome The Riverside Chaucer, in which the Tales defeated me multiple times.

What I’m most impressed about the Tales is how successfully it captures polyvocality. Even though the embedded storytellers are defined by their work or office – there’s the Merchant, the Squire, the Cook, the Man of Law – or by their relation to somebody or something – there’s the Wife of Bath and the Nun’s Priest – it is as if they all carried a voice of their own. This is mainly engendered by the wide range of styles Chaucer employs to seize the experiences of different walks of life (e.g. class and gender).

Furthermore, the stories are skillfully interwoven in the frame narrative. It’s surprisingly metatextual and ironic. The storytellers comment on and respond to the preceding tales; if one tells a too serious story, another tells a humorous one. The pilgrims are also harsh critics. When the Monk finally ends his long, lofty litany regarding despots, the Host remarks:

Mister Monk, no more of this, the Lord bless you!
Your tales are boring all of us to death,
And all this kind of walk is waste of breath,
No fun in it, it doesn’t entertain.

The reader may nod in agreement. But that’s a great aspect of the book: Chaucer seems to be so aware of all he’s presenting. There’s a great deal of humor in these asides, but also in some of the stories. There are some rough, dirty passages that made me laugh out loud (“The Miller’s Tale”), whereas some passages are more contemplative on, for instance, women’s role in marriage (“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” and “Tale”).

I’m glad I tackled this in Wright’s translation, even though it lacks the sound of the original. I’ve read some of these stories in Middle English in uni and remember enjoying the language, but for completing the whole thing (or 97% of it – Wright has abridged some of the lengthy prose passages) in a reasonable period of time, this translation was a wise choice for me.

"It's that you each, to shorten the long journey,
Shall tell two tales en route to Canterbury,
And, coming homeward, another two,
Stories of things that happened long ago.
Whoever best acquits himself, and tells
The most amusing and instructive tale,
Shall have a dinner, paid by us all,
Here in this roof, and under this roof-tree,
When we come back again from Canterbury."

One of the most legendary books from the Middle Ages, the Canterbury Tales is a wonderful collection of short stories about life in medieval England.

Chaucer’s world at the time of writing is one of plague, famine and war. The Hundred Years’ War had just come out of one of its most violent phases when the author penned these words. And yet the Canterbury Tales are filled with humour, lightness and parody. There is little of the dark, war-torn oppressed society that some might expect.

Throughout the collection, Chaucer fills his pages with wit, exaggeration and an illustration of how medieval English society was outside the religious texts and formally written histories. That makes for rather interesting reading.

The Canterbury Tales is far from the best book ever written. The language, despite sometimes being incomprehensible, is sometimes beautiful, but not something truly outstanding. The tales themselves are far from perfect, and the characters are a mixed bunch, both in morality, complexity and pure quality.

Nevertheless, this is a classic for a reason, and that reason isn’t only that the book through a twist of fate actually has survived down the centuries. It provides a fun and light-hearted insight into the English Middle Ages, and it’s been inspiring European culture for centuries.

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of over 20 stories which were written near the end of the Fourteenth Century, just prior to 1400. While this is often referred to as an essential in medieval fiction, it is possible to narrow it down a little further and say this is a glimpse of life during the time of the Hundred Years’ War. The collection of tales helps break up this book a bit but it also contains a loose narrative framework throughout the entire The Canterbury Tales. I could go into deep analysis of each tale without doing a disservice to the quality and diversity of Geoffrey Chaucer’s large work. However in an effort to talk about The Canterbury Tales in its entirety, I may have to resort to broad analysis and generalities.

The Fourteenth Century was a violent and unstable period of time in English history; not only was the Hundred Years War raging with the French (1340-1450) but there was the Black Death (1348), famines and rebellions (the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381). This was an unstable time, things were changing; even the Catholic Church which often had a community-building nature was corrupt and abusing its power. Near the end of the 14th Century the Church was a mess, there was the sale of church offices as well as indulgences and pardons as well as greed and moral corruption. The Western Schism (or Papal Schism) took place from 1378 to 1418 where the Church was divided and several men simultaneously claimed to be the true pope. This should give you an idea of just what kind of instability the people in The Canterbury Tales faced.

However this book explored more than this instability; it is a medieval tapestry exploring the whole feel of this period but it might be easier to narrow it down to three major themes. The political, since The Norman conquest of England (1066) the country was gradually processing toward political consolidation and unification, a theme that comes through a number of times within this book. Social and economic changes, following the story of many people around England as urbanisation takes affect and London becomes a more modern city. Finally The Canterbury Tales explores the cultural changes of a changing time; social classes are shifting but still play a big role within this country.

I know I am probably looking at this book through modern eyes but this is the best way I found to wrap my head around what is written. Luckily I didn’t have to read this book in Middle English and got to rely on Nevill Coghill’s translation but I am not going to deny that this was a very difficult book to get through. I found trying to understand the situation as if England changed from medieval into a modern society helped me pick up on the social, economical and political changes. I know London didn’t become an urban city like we know it today but it helped me follow the shifting times. I am not sure if viewing the book this way helped me understand it better or sent me down the wrong path but it doesn’t matter, is there a right or wrong way to interpret literature?

Symbolism, imagery and allegory play a huge part in Chaucer’s tales but it is hard to go into details on this topic because they change from story to story. What I found surprising about this book is not the beautiful poetic lines but how real and raw the emotions played out in each tales. I read an exploration into marriage, growing old, morality, rape, sexual pleasure and even anti-social behaviour. I never expected this from the book and it really surprised me. From a general overview The Canterbury Tales looks at a changing time but each tale goes into a personal look into different people’s lives.

As the narrator, Geoffrey Chaucer plays with the narrative from tale to tale; sometimes he comes off as naïve but then he can be very knowledgeable. I picked up on how heavy he is on the irony, but in all honesty I didn’t have enough knowledge of the times to be able to explore this as much as I would have liked. If it wasn’t for the fact that I read this for a university subject I might have really struggled with this book. A lecture and some reading guides really helped me get something out of this book but like I said, I don’t have enough knowledge of medieval history to fully grasp this book in its entirety.

I mentioned to my dad that I had to read this book and he told me not to bother; he called it crude and vulgar but that only made me excited. I understand now that he had to read this book for high school and found it difficult but I can’t say vulgar is a good word to describe this book. Sure, there are some crude scenes but life is never full of well-mannered moral people. Chaucer explores life at this time and doesn’t shy away from the tough topics; but I think that is what makes this book so great.

This review originally appeared on my blog: http://literary-exploration.com/2014/...

صریح و بی حاشیه باید اذعان کنم مجموعه ای است که خیلی خوب باشد متوسط است. البته این حرف با نظر به ترجمه است شاید ظرافت های زبانی اصل اثر قضاوت را بهتر کند - که البته بعد می دانم وقتی برسد که سراغ متن انگلیسی میانه ی آن بروم. خیلی از داستان ها در واقع داستان منسجمی نیستند یا پندند یا شیرین کاری یا شکایت یا اموری از این دست. کمتر داستانی هست که در عین داشتن داستانی استوار، اخلاقی یا طنز یا طعنه آمیز یا ... باشد. بگذریم که چند داستانی را چاسر خود نیمه تمام رها کرده است

مترجم انگلیسی، لومیانسکی، - که مبنای این ترجمه فارسی است - سه داستان را تلخیص و در واقع به شدت تلخیص کرده - در حد یک صفحه یا کمتر : داستان دوم چاسر، داستان راهب ( ذکر یک داستان از 17 تا ) و داستان کشیش بخش

نکته ی جالب در این میان طعنه های فراوان به اهل مذهب و دین در عین حفظ اصل ایمان است. این برای کسانی خوب است که گمان می کنند قرون وسطی همه در آن دوران سیاه تفتیش عقاید اسپانیا خلاصه می شود - البته درست است که چاسر در قرون پایانی قرون وسطی است اما مگر انکیزاسیون در همین قرون پایانی نبود؟ در این کتاب انگی یافت نمی شود که به اهل کلیسا یا به علما و راهبه ها و درویشان مسیحی زده نشود: از امور جنسی گرفته تا فساد مالی و سوء استفاده های مذهبی. به نظرم این کتاب بیشتر از آنکه جنبه ی داستانی اش پررنگ باشد به درد مطالعات فرهنگ عامیانه می خورد. اشارات یهودسیتز و زن ستیز در این کتاب که البته اولی تنها یک جا اما دومی اینجا و آنجا وجود دارد، آزاردهنده است؛ حتی آنجاهایی که حرف از رهایی زن از چنگال مرد می شود زن بیشتر مثل درنده خویی است که تحمل زندانی شدن را ندارد و نه انسانی که به دنبال آزادی است. البته چاسر گاهی حرف های تعدیل کننده ای می زند اما تأثیر کلیت اثر را عوض نمی کند

من ترجیح می دادم کتاب های مرجع چاسر برای این داستان ها را بخوانم تا این کتاب را - چه آثار ایتالیایی ها و ... و چه آثار قبلی خود چاسر. شاید آنجاها جنبه ی داستانی پررنگ تر باشد و استوارتر

داستان های بهتر و جالب تر به نظرم اینها هستند: داستان ملوان، داستان آمرزش فروش، داستان کدخدا و داستان ملاک

If you've never read Chaucer in original medieval English, I definitely suggest you give it a go. It is such a satisfying experience and loads of fun to decode and demystify (you usually uncover something dirty or obscene).

If the challenges of translation aren't for you, pick up a translated copy. You can have all the fun without the work.

Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai3QQ...

Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, c. 1400 CE


From Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales: Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations:

"Except for Shakespeare, whom he profoundly influenced, Chaucer is the major literary artist in the English language" (ed. Harold Bloom, 1).

From "Confusion of Orifices in Chaucer's Miller's Tale" by Louise M. Bishop:

"Chaucer uses sensual confusion to poke fun at the limits of human knowledge..." (170).

From The Canterbury Tales (Penguin, trans. Nevill Coghill):

"No English poet has so mannerly an approach to his reader" (xi).
"All Chaucer's heroes regard love when it comes upon them as the most beautiful of absolute disasters, an agony to be as much desired as bemoaned, ever to be pursued, never to be betrayed" (xii).

From The Lifetime Reading Plan by Clifton Fadiman:

"As Dante's great poem is called The Divine Comedy, so Chaucer's has been called the Human Comedy" (74).
"The Prologue...is perhaps the most delightful portrait gallery in all literature" (75).
"Chaucer is a perfect yarn spinner, the founder of English realism, and an entrancing human being" (75).

From Genius by Harold Bloom:

"Profoundly impressed and cheerfully irritated by Dante, Chaucer created a parody of Dante the Pilgrim in Chaucer the Pilgrim of the Canterbury Tales" (104).

From The Western Canon by Harold Bloom:

"Turning from what is overpraised to what cannot be overpraised, the Canterbury Tales is a remarkable tonic" (99).

From Classics for Pleasure by Michael Dirda:

"From Chaucer and Cervantes to Joyce and Proust, our greatest comic writers don't simply make us laugh, they show us what it means to be human" (18).

From The Well-Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer:

"At the end of his book, Chaucer primly retracts the Tales along with his other "worldly translations," thus shifting the blame for enjoying them onto the reader" (364).

From The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson:

"Inspired and perhaps influenced, but certainly not distracted, by the world around him, Chaucer yet found time to write thousands of lines, among them some of the best poetry in English" (xv).

From Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World by Donald R. Howard:

"Of all the writers Chaucer has had the greatest influence on English literature; he stands at the beginning, the father of English poetry, as Dryden and Arnold called him" (xi).
"Chaucer--unlike most writers, I fear--led an interesting life" (xii).

From Chaucer's Tale: 1386 and the Road to Canterbury by Paul Strohm:

"Chaucer may, in fact must, be seen in double vision: as the medieval poet that he was and as the poet of permanent themes and enduring stature that he aspired to be, situated in the 'then' of his own time but also speaking to the 'now' of ours" (13).

(First, a note about the edition I used--the Penguin paperback with modern English versification by Nevill Coghill. While the translation is exceptional (retention of verse and rhyme), the edition lacks line numbers, footnotes on the page, an informative introduction, and more end notes. Yet, paired with the Everyman's Middle English, and well supplemented, edition, you will be in good standing. The Riverside Chaucer is also a critical text for the serious student.)

It has taken me a long while to catch onto Chaucer's Boccaccio-inspired masterwork (though he never credited Boccaccio). Like most, I read the General Prologue, the Miller's Tale, and the Wife of Bath's Tale in school. I read it again in college. No double the Miller's Tale woes the electric minds of youth, what with its bawdy riffing on orifices, but, in the end, it isn't enough to keep young minds coming back. Like most works of high literature (I'm thinking Moby-Dick especially), one needs much experience in life before being ready to take on such dense books. It is a tragedy that most are completely turned off by these classics by the end of high school. For me, at thirty-five now, this is the first time I can say that I went beyond appreciating the endurance of the work and actually enjoyed it as a common reader.

Aside from helming English literature--alongside his former teacher John Wycliffe, who produced the first English translation of the Bible--the Tales are remarkable for denying the more accepted French of the day for such works that targeted nobility. Like Dante who denied Latin in favor of his Tuscan, Chaucer put English on the literary map. To be more precise, however, if we take consult the Riverside Chaucer text, we find that "...English...had been used in poetry and prose for at least six centuries before Chaucer began to write" (xxix), but the Norman Conquest overshadowed all the regional dialects of English. What Chaucer actually did was to show that "...English could be written with an elegance and power that earlier authors had not attained" (xxx). The work also begins with a realism that was unprecedented in literary works. Chaucer manages to embody thirty-some personalities seemingly effortlessly. The General Prologue begins with an assertion of his poetic ability:

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.

Then the Prologue gives way to a fascinating roll call of characters.

The wrapper-story sets up like The Arabian Nights where the story around all the stories keeps the time element moving along. The Host decides to while away the travel time of their pilgrimage by having a story contest. Each of the thirty characters is to tell two stories there and two stories back. Thus, the original conception was to have one hundred and twenty stories (twenty more than Boccaccio, mind), but, sadly, Chaucer died in 1400 before he could finish. The criteria by which the tales will be judged by the Host: "...who gives the fullest measure / Of good morality and general pleasure..." (24).

Like Dante, again, and as others we will see later (Shakespeare, Milton, Melville, et al.), Chaucer has all of history, literature, theology, and philosophy at his disposal. Through his characters, he reveals an enormous store of information. Among the works referenced or alluded to: Homer, Aristotle, Virgil, Livy, Petrarch, Ovid, Augustine, Suetonius, Lucan, Valerius, the Bible. And the way in which he threads all these sources into the Tales is well-measured and -calculated.

The Knight's Tale leads off, and with its noble theme of chivalry (indeed, it brings ancient Greece into the fourteenth century), so treasured in Chaucer's day, it acts as a sort of bait-and-switch when turning next to the Miller's Tale. This is perhaps the most notorious of all the Tales (pun intended), what with its image of Alison sticking her "hole" out the window and Absalon kissing it: "And Absalon has kissed her nether eye" (106). It also introduces the word "quim" as Coghill translates it, and a vulgar depiction Nicolas grabbing Alison's pudendum (according to the Riverside Chaucer). Thus, in the first two tales, we see the poet's mastery of the chivalrous and the bawdy. He is daring enough to have a character blast a fart in someone's face and a Catholic member of the clergy shamelessly brag about his avarice. At the same time, Chaucer has no problem digging through the annals of history to highlight the Christian concept of pride before the fall.

Overall, these stories and their raconteurs put on display our humanity in all of its paradoxes, lows, and highs. As the Host says, "Now isn't in a marvel of God's grace / That an illiterate fellow can outpace / The wisdom of a heap of learned men?" (18). These common people deal with all the struggles we all do, and they cope with them in different ways. As the host urges storytellers to leave sad, depressing tales and lighten the mood with farce, so is life in its vicissitudes. Chaucer, himself, as the poet-pilgrim, isn't above self-deprecation--his own tale is interrupted because it is so bad.

Ovid is the most present source in the Tales. They are rife with transformations, though perhaps not from one creature to another; these transformations are more human: social, moral, ethical. In the Monk's tale, we get a veritable encyclopedia of transformations, tragedies, and moral transgressions, beginning with Lucifer and ending with Croesus. (Humorously, the monk gets cut off because he is killing the mood.) Emotional transformations abound: "Ever the latter end of joy is woe..."(224). Nothing is permanent. Nothing stays the same. All is change, as Democritus taught.

While these tales anticipate the bodily humor of Rabelais, they also prefigure twentieth-century feminism with the provocative, confident, enchanting proto-feminist The Wife of Bath. So secure is her mark upon the work that no conversation of Chaucer is complete without her. From the start of her prologue, The Wife of Bath shatters female stereotypes (or perhaps, in context, I should say expectations). Far from the lowly servant to her husband, it is she who pines for the reigns to the relationship. And she is ready to argue not only for equality, but for the upper hand, using a wealth of examples from the very Bible that men hold over her! She speaks forth with a boldness that is as shocking as it is admirable. In the opening lines--"If there were no authority on earth / Except experience, mine, for what it's worth, / And that's enough for me..."--The Wife of Bath gives a precursor to nineteenth-century American self-reliance. She is secure with and proud of her sexuality; no repression for this wife; and in this category, men are pitiful ("What means of paying her can he invent / Unless he use his silly instrument?") and women free ("In wifehood I will use my instrument / As freely as my Maker me it sent"). Truly she boasts in her "quoniam," a word to be savored in posterity along with the Miller's Tale's "quim": "And truly, as my husbands said to me, / I had the finest quoniam that might be...." But all this attention-grabbing prologue is not merely for flipping the conception of men and women on its head. The prologue sets the stage for a tale that argues a cunning theory. If men allow the woman to have mastery over them, everyone gets what they want! That, however, is a simple and somewhat cheeky rendering of a tale with so clever a capstone on the central question of what women desire the most.

Chaucer's work, like Homer, like Dante, sings and much as it informs. If one puts in the time to learn the pronunciations of the Middle English and the effort to chat the passages aloud, one will be most rewarded. The language, far from being harsh in its Germanic influence, is intoxicating. The rime riche and ever-changing schemes that match the tone of the story being told raise the literature far above mere storytelling. Chaucer, in the end, is an artist in full command of his craft. His work stands centuries later as the genesis of English literature and continues to speak to us through the ages.

I must begin this review with a kind of repentance. Many years ago, I made my way through The Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English. I figured myself rather clever and linguistically capable enough to handle the language. Indeed, I even felt no pangs about reading the book before bedtime, fighting through the morass of unusual spellings and unfamiliar words while I was at my drowsiest. Needless to say, I did not have an easy time of it. And this difficulty colored rather unfairly my opinion of Chaucer.
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This time around, I opted for a modern “translation”—two, in fact: the first, a print version by Nevill Coghill; the second, an audio version by Gerald J. Davis.* Immediately the error of my first impression was apparent. When the obscurity of Chaucer’s English was stripped away, I encountered a thoroughly enjoyable and wholly interesting book.
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Admittedly, the circumstances of my reading were also more propitious. I read The Canterbury Tales this time around while I was, myself, on a pilgrimage—spending a few days on the Camino de Santiago, in the north of Spain. Chaucer made for quite an excellent companion—more entertaining, in fact, than the real pilgrims I encountered. (The conceit of the book struck me as especially fanciful by comparison with my experience. Virtually all conversation between the real-life pilgrims consisted of the most predictable small-talk—where are you from, how many kilometers, what’s your job, etc. Certainly I was no better as a conversationalist.)
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I was first struck by Chaucer’s obvious debt to Boccaccio. The basic device is the same: a group of people are stuck together, and must tell stories to pass the time. More than that, several of the stories in this book are taken directly from Boccaccio (who is not credited, though I think that was common practice at the time). However, the differences are important as well, and highlight Chaucer’s strengths. Most obvious is that Chaucer was not just a storyteller, but a poet, and his tales are written in brilliant verse. More important, however, are the characters Chaucer employs to tell his stories. While Boccaccio’s storytellers are all genteel aristocrats, Chaucer’s raconteurs come from all levels of society, the poor and the rich, the lowborn and the noble, the profane and the holy.
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In these two great gifts—his poetic suppleness and his all-embracing social vision—Chaucer is a direct forerunner of Shakespeare. But the similarity does not stop there. While Chaucer’s characterizations, like Boccaccio’s, are often fairly superficial, at times he achieves depths worthy of the bard himself. This is most obvious in the acknowledged high point of the poem, the Wife of Bath’s Prologue. Here, it is clear that Chaucer realized he had achieved something of a breakthrough, since he allowed the prologue to run longer than any other—longer, even, than the story that follows. And like any of Shakespeare’s great characters involved in a soliloquy, the Wife of Bath comes wholly alive in a way that, as far as I know, was unprecedented for the time.
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The content of the stories is varied, but some major themes stand out for comment. The most striking, I think, is that of women and wives. Chaucer presents several disparate views on the matter. One story, for example, advocates that wives be absolutely subservient and obedient to all their husband’s whims, while the Wife of Bath (among others) believes that marriages only work when the wife is in charge. Related is the question of women’s sexuality: Is it something evil or innocent? Is sex to be free and easy within marriage, or is virginity the ideal state? A secondary theme is that of religion. Chaucer, like Boccaccio, makes fun of monks and clergy outrageously, but this does not stop him from being extremely pious in other moments.
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This brings me to the low points in the book, the two prose pieces: the Tale of Melibee and the Parson’s Tale. Both of these are not really tales at all, but moralizing essays, full of Bible quotes and references to Aristotle and Cicero. (Indeed, they are wisely omitted from the Coghill version, but I suffered through the audio.) Here, we see that Chaucer could be dreadfully boring in certain moods. These two pieces have no humor at all, and are full of the stuffiest, most pedantic piety imaginable—solemnly concluding, for example, that temperance is the opposite of gluttony, or that good advice is preferable to bad advice. After the ebullience of the Wife of Bath, it is puzzling that Chaucer could have written such tedious pettifoggery. Did he intend these ironically, or was he protected himself from damaging accusations, or did he undergo a religious awakening halfway through writing the tales?
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Whatever the case may be, the rest of the book is good enough to forgive him these trespasses. To state the obvious, this book is a classic in every sense of the word. Perhaps I ought to try the original once more? Or should I not press my luck?
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*For what it is worth, I liked the Davis version, and noticed no difference in quality from the esteemed Coghill version. However, I find it odd that Davis has translated books from so many different languages: Gilgamesh, Don Quixote, The Divine Comedy, Beowulf… Either he is a linguistic genius or is getting some help.

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