Embarking on a literary journey with "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer is akin to stepping back into the rich tapestry of late medieval England. This collection of stories, meriting a five-star rating, is not only a cornerstone of English literature but also a vibrant, insightful window into the lives and attitudes of people from various strata of 14th-century society.

Chaucer’s work, structured as a story-telling contest among a group of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, is a remarkable blend of humor, irony, bawdiness, and moral questioning. Each pilgrim tells a tale, and through these stories, Chaucer offers a panoramic view of medieval society. The tales range from the bawdy and humorous "Miller’s Tale" to the morally complex "Pardoner’s Tale," showcasing Chaucer’s versatility and mastery of different literary genres.

One of the most striking features of "The Canterbury Tales" is Chaucer’s use of Middle English, which lends an authenticity and flavor to the narrative. His language is rich and expressive, full of vivid imagery and wit. While the Middle English vernacular can be challenging for the modern reader, it also adds depth and character to the tales, making them more engaging and lively.

The characters in "The Canterbury Tales" are vividly drawn, each representing different aspects of contemporary society. From the noble Knight to the bawdy Wife of Bath, Chaucer provides a diverse cast of characters, each with their own distinct voice and perspective. This diversity not only reflects the social hierarchy of the time but also allows Chaucer to explore a wide range of human experiences and emotions.

Moreover, Chaucer’s work is notable for its exploration of themes that are still relevant today, such as the nature of love, the corrupting power of greed, and the quest for redemption. His insightful observations about human nature, combined with his ability to tell a compelling story, make "The Canterbury Tales" a timeless classic.

However, it’s important to acknowledge that "The Canterbury Tales" might not be immediately accessible to the modern reader due to the Middle English language and some historical references that require contextual understanding. Nonetheless, for those willing to navigate these challenges, the rewards are manifold.

In summary, "The Canterbury Tales" is a masterful work that brilliantly captures the human condition in all its complexity. Chaucer’s innovative narrative structure, rich characterizations, and the blend of humor and seriousness make it a landmark in the history of English literature. For its enduring impact, narrative brilliance, and insightful commentary on human nature, "The Canterbury Tales" unquestionably deserves a five-star rating.

Like two other Medieval landmarks, the Decameron and 1001 Nights, the Canterbury Tales are a collection of short stories drawn together by a framing story. In this case it’s a group of pilgrims from all different parts of society, and they’re telling stories to pass the time on their way to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket. Here he is getting killed:


Fatality!

Chaucer only managed to finish 23 of a planned 120 stories, so that’s actually a pretty bad job; his big innovation was that the 23 he did finish created real, distinct characters representing a cross-section of society. The hypocritical religious figure the Pardoner, who’s basically running a protection racket for the soul - and we can see in him how jaded people have gotten about organized religion - the drunken Miller, who tells one of several lengthy fart jokes; and of course the Wife of Bath, Chaucer’s greatest creation.


don't want no scrubs

She’s looking for her sixth husband; she cheerfully admits to using sex to get what she wants; she has a dim view of men except as a means to an end.

By God! if women hadde written stories,
As clerkes han withinne hire oratories,
They wolde han writen of men moore wikkednesse
Than all the mark of Adam may redresse.

What she’s saying is that men control the narrative; when it’s her turn to speak she has a lot to say.

There are also, as mentioned, a number of fart jokes. The Miller's Tale contains perhaps history's first description of analingus as Absalon "kissed [this one lady's] naked arse, most savorously." The Summoner's Tale is an examination of the age-old question of how to divide a fart into twelve parts. Don't worry, they figure it out.

My biggest fear about this book was that it would be like The Pilgrim's Progress. Although they followed a similar format, they couldn't have been more different for me. The Pilgrim's Progress was boring and preachy, whereas this was delightfully bawdy.

There are many translations, from Middle English, to Victorian verse, to modern day prose. So sample a few and read what you're comfortable with. Then dive in and enjoy the stories. They can be read independently of one another, but often play off each other so they're best read in order, though this differs between editions. If you happen to hit one you don't like, feel free to skip it, as there'll be another riotous tale along soon enough.

These can be read lightly, laughing at the rudeness and humour, or studied more in depth, to find hidden subtleties and meanings. It's the sort of book that re-reading will enrich your experience and it's one I'm glad to have tried for my first time.

So don't be scared of stuffy or complex tales because it's 600 years old. Really, not that much has changed today.

Look out, Bocaccio -- there's a new author of clever, bawdy rhyming tales, and his name is Geoffrey Chaucer! Whether you're a reeve, abbot, or just a simple canon's yeoman, you're sure to find something delightful in this witty, incisive collection. My personal favorites were the one about Chaunticleer the rooster and the one where the dude gets a red-hot poker shoved up his butt. I read it while I was laid up with the plague, and Chaucer's insouciant descriptions and intricate plotting helped immeasurably in my recuperation. The frequent bloodlettings prescribed by my barber-surgeon helped, too.

Quick note: If you're illiterate, like nine-tenths of the population, this might not be the book for you.

I cheated. I read Chaucer’s classic collection of tales in an edition transposed into modern English. And I make no apologies for it. Unless you are a scholar, a literary snob, or a masochist, there’s really no reason not to.

My reactions to Chaucer’s tales varied widely, from utter fascination to bored skimming. The best of these can still delight a modern reader, yet they are interspersed with real snoozers. Chaucer ended his collection with The Parson's Tale, which is no story at all, but rather a sermon, endlessly droning on about penance. It is not a choice that a modern author would make. Still, the fact that so many of these tales still resonate and entertain over six hundred years after they were written is a compelling reason to add this book to your must read list. Not only is it a fascinating window into the mindset of the 14th century world, but a striking example of the constancy of human nature.

Blackstone Audio audiobook provided my window into Chaucer’s work. It’s a great way to experience it. Rather than a single reader, an entire cast is used to dramatize the different tales. The J.U. Nicolson translation into modern English flowed easily, was accessible and enjoyable.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to be done with a book. Maybe when I was in school, but not in more recent memory. So… apologies to all the people who have a proper appreciation for classic literature and what Chaucer accomplished here. I do realize this was an impressive and ambitious work and deserves a higher rating for many objective reasons, but my reviews and star ratings are based primarily on my subjective thoughts. I’ve started trying to fit some classics into my reading schedule over the past few years, but I’m not a very scholarly reader and I don’t have a strong foundation in or love for the classics.

For anybody not familiar with the basic premise, The Canterbury Tales has a framing story in which a group of pilgrims who don’t know each other are traveling together toward a shrine in Canterbury. The host of the group talks them into telling stories to help pass the time as they travel. So we have a couple dozen or so pilgrims riding together on horses and somehow sharing stories amongst all of them. I can only assume they were passing around a megaphone or shouting their poetic tales at the top of their lungs or using some sort of relay system…

My edition is in the original Middle English. I was worried I might have trouble with it, and it looked a little intimidating at first, but it wasn’t as difficult as I expected. I read most of it out loud (my cat hates me now) because I found it easier to understand the words through a combination of hearing in my own ears how they sounded combined with the context, plus most of it is in verse so I was able to appreciate the rhythm of it better that way. My edition also has a lot of commentary, ranging from definitions of the words to more extensive commentary about the sources of Chaucer’s tales, their themes, and historical references. I have to admit I skimmed the commentary more and more as I went along, enjoyed the stories less and less, and lost motivation.

According to the commentary, it’s believed that all of the tales were inspired by other works known at the time, but Chaucer put his own spin on it or combined different aspects of different versions of those stories. Most of that went over my head and I was only aware of it thanks to the commentary. The tales were not at all the sort of thing I enjoy reading. Some of them were romances, some of them were “lustances”, lots of them were populated by dishonest, cheating, manipulative people. Some of them were very preachy.

There was some humor here and there. Some of it also caught me by surprise. There I was, reading along in this archaic language about people living in archaic times and suddenly there was something like a guy kissing a woman’s butt and mistaking her pubic hair for a beard. I was so surprised the first time I came across something like that that I had to re-read the text to make sure I hadn’t misinterpreted it. Fortunately I hadn’t misread it, because I think I would have been really alarmed to realize I’d come up with that all in my own head. So in that respect I had some humorous moments, particularly with some of the earlier stories, as some of the content was not at all what I’d been expecting. There’s also some humor just in remembering my reactions as I read various things. So I didn’t enjoy the reading experience itself very much, but I guess I have some enjoyment from the memory of the reading experience now that it’s over!

As far as holding my attention, I think the Man of Law’s Tale probably worked the best for me. The Clerk’s Tale enraged me. That wasn’t the only tale that I had conflicts with of course, but I don’t usually get too up in arms when I read older works that conflict with my values. That one pushed some buttons for me, though. And that last “tale”… that one might have done me in if I hadn’t known it was the very last tale. I guess it was a fitting end considering the characters and the premise, but I think I would have preferred to read another trope-filled romance story and I hate those.

Ok, I have to stop typing this ridiculously long review and go sing and dance about how happy I am that I’m finally done now! ;)

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.

Another - 'I am so glad to get this off my book bucket list' - book that was very hard for me to understand. The stories were often grounded in concepts that I think modern readers may have problems understanding, but I still recognize that this book is one of the great literary works of all time. I mark it a 'favorite' due to the fact that it is a 'key' to understanding other works of literature. I am sure this narrative form of story telling has influenced untold works of art.

An ancient book from over 600 years in the past still famous, and relevant which is the reasons it's a classic undoubtedly. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote these bawdy tales with confidence working for the royal family sure helps. If you think fart jokes are a modern invention you're wrong and this proves this fact . The British have a quirky sense of humor and Nevill Goghill new translation captures the essence without losing the flavor intended by the author. Readers now may enjoy the amusing stories, incomprehensible words become clear . The simple plot about thirty ordinary people in long ago medieval England on a pilgrim to the shrine (tomb ) of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. 23 engrossing tales Chaucer wrote he never quite finished all, too busy working for the King and maybe losing interest or failing health we will never know but what is left is a precious jewel. I don't usually like short stories most people today feel the same way, but everything has exceptions. The prologue is thoroughly remarkable , showing how talent raises the ordinary above the Earth, reaching not the Moon but the Stars. My favorite is the Miller's Tale, mistaken identity becomes even after the passage of many centuries, yet tickles the funny bone to be honest, brakes it. Nothing new under the Sun is quite apparent as we the grateful reader follow the narratives of these strange fables of drunks, sex addicts and gullible morons searching for the eternal get rich quick scheme of the Canon's Yeoman 's Tale, a little disguised Chaucer falling for an alchemy con man. Intelligent people's greed tricks them like anyone else. The Knight's Tale looks like just another love story, rival cousins enamored with the same woman, new then but common now yet aspects are still memorable. Another yarn very hilarious, The Summoner's Tale about an ailing man named Thomas known for being generous with funding the Church , is asked by a friar for the gold the sick gentleman said he had. To be delicate while reaching for the prize Thomas in bed lets go of bad gas instead. Not happy indeed the angry friar flees in disgust. There are certain books which become more than famous or even just a classic, these admittedly rare phenomenon like snow in San Diego or gardens on the Moon, nevertheless things bounce in ways unknown and where they fall surprises. Canterbury Tales is one and deserves to be.

Well, that came out of the blue!

I perused it, expecting some blend of quaint bits of Merry England, cloaked under some veil of Medieval lore, yet I had been confronted with something quite different!

This comes out as an array of odd tales, dealing with peoples' shortcomings, cuckholding, cheating, ripping off and the likes! As a whole it stands out unprecedented, a fearsome match for almost any collection of modern or contemporary shorts stories I have read.

For starters, each character has its selfsame tone, rich with personal features and quirks.
Each tale bears its unicity to the whole, leaving you at a loss to decide what folk of the Canterbury Tales you like the most.

Though plainly bored by the rare few ones set on mythological figures entirely, I will remember this work as a moveable feast!


Matching Soundtrack :
Gryphon album - Gryphon

Magnificent Geoffrey Chaucer. What matters most to me about him?

How He Could Write

How he could write about people!

What do these characters have in common? The Knight, the Miller, the Friar, the Squire, the Prioress, the Wife of Bath, and others -- they don't simply bring their tales. They reek of individuality, quirkiness, human wackiness.

Not a single one is a type (unlike characters that are all too easy to find in some fast-moving novels written NOW).

How He Could Survive

Geoffrey survived The Plague, for heaven's sake. In England, the Black Death killed 2 million people.

Yet Chaucer survived and thrived well enough to write an outrageous book... bristling with verve, lustiness, satire, hilarity, adventure.

How I Would Love to Shake Hands with Geoffrey Chaucer!

My hunch? He had more vitality in his left pinky fingernail...
Than many a well fed, pampered, privileged, TikTok fancier living today.

Imagine shaking hands with Chaucer. Imagine dancing with him.
At least we can read his immortal Tales.

Read for my English 201 class in university. I recall how many upperclassmen warned me how terrible Chaucer was going to be. I never admitted it at the time, but I really enjoyed it.