After so many years of having this classic on my to-read list, I finally did it and read all of Chaucer’s masterpiece. The fact that the book was banned for such a long time now makes sense because the fun stories are highly sexual and there is lots of promiscuity. The tales were overall wonderful and fun to read and I am happy I read them now at this point in time because I believe I wouldn’t have enjoyed them as much had I been forced to read them in my 20s.

The Knight’s Tale and The Clerk’s Tale were beautifully written; The Miller’s Tale, The Reeve’s Tale, The Shipman’s Tale and The Wife of Bath’s Tale were absolutely hilarious; The Man of Law’s Tale, The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, The Physician’s Tale, The Friar’s Tale, The Merchant’s Tale and The Franklin’s Tale were interesting; the fact that Chaucer’s own tale of Sir Topaz was interrupted and he was told basically to shut up because he was boring everyone to death was extremely funny which also happened to the Squire’s Tale.

The rest of the stories were mostly religious and quite boring and if you only want to read the good ones don’t bother with any tale I have not listed here.

A Classic that Set the Stage for both Pre-modern and Modern Fiction

A group of strangers find themselves at an inn on the way to a festival.

The hosts suggests they share tales.

These strangers - representing the full stratification of medieval Britain - from the noble Knight to the self-described immoral Pardoner, each share a tale.

Some are good. Some are not. One, the Pardoner's tale - is considered to be the greatest short story of all time.

But as a whole, this work is timeless and has deservedly withstood history's meandering. Is it because it survived, and such things have value because they survived? Or is it more than that?

I believe it is more than that because it's incredible.

These tales just give a slice of humanity, and show the power of society, and make me proud to be a human

I read Noah Harari's Sapiens, and understood that humanity's true power lies not in its intelligence alone. Dolphins are intelligent, perhaps more intelligent in some regards.

Humanity's power lies in its ability to cooperate through the power of illusion.

From drawing up magically-enforced contracts to pay five hundred workers artificially-imbued monetary units so that they might build a building over the course of five years, to nations and borders, we as a species can make things up to arbitrarily agree on, and then make very real things happen.

And in human society, one of our inventions is a division of labor. It's not always fair, in fact it rarely is - but humans can do it on a scale unimaginable to any other species. And this division of labor is effectively a mass cooperation, and can bring extraordinary things.

In the Canterbury Tales one bit of each of Medieval England's labor and class divisions finds themselves at the host's Inn with Chaucer -



In the diagram above, they not only show the levels of Class, from Knight to Pardoner, but levels of morality.

The Knight is the most moral. He fights and does not talk about it. He is at the top.

The Pardoner is at the other end - the man who sells religious pardons and keeps money for himself, and he is the least moral.

Chaucer gives the Pardoner a break though - the Pardoner admits his immorality to all assembled, and then gives the best tale - some say the greatest short story in history.

And from Knight to Pardoner, they bring the tales of humanity - and it is all incredible.

Some stories are better than others. The Physician's Tale is perhaps incomplete. The Prioress's Tale is filled with anti-Semitism, which was the pervasive style of the era in England, so we'll not cast aspersions on Chaucer, but rather cast aspersions on his pre-Enlightenment time.

The Nun's Priest's tale is a Bestiary tale - of a rooster named Chaunticleer and a fox named Don Russell. Bestiary tales have animals with the characteristics of humans, and this implies that some human habits are animal-like.

But no - animals outside of humanity could not tell this set of tales. Only humans, and human society could tell this set of tales.

Was Chaucer a story-maker? Or a story-teller?

IE was he just like Aesop in the sense that he wrote down the tales of the time? Or did he make these tales?

The answer is that it doesn't really matter. Aesop found a way to get his tales into writing, and so did Chaucer.

And one way or another, they laid the foundation for future fiction.

For this, I am grateful. So read The Canterbury Tales - you'll be taking in the foundations of fiction, and seeing a collection of the fictions that bring humanity together. And perhaps like me, you might read Chaucer and be proud to be part of humanity after you turn the last page.

3.0 barely passing stars

A few witty lines, an occasional life lesson, but mostly..... a boring lot of hot air.

I read The Cantebury Tales the first time in high school and hated it. I didn't think I was ever going to get through it. Then in college I read it again and loved it. Not sure what happened that made me appreciate it more, but I did. I've equally come to appreciate it more the older I get. I love all of the stories and it is hard for to say which one I enjoy most. I love how each one is independent but they feed off each other too. Overall they are rhythmic, funny and thought-provoking while at the same time sometimes bawdy, weird and crazy. A true masterpiece.

Granted, this is arguably the very first piece of English literature, but that just goes to show you why all skills must be practiced first.

I've yet to read all of them, but this rating will obviously stand for the whole thing. I didn't really like Chaucer for several years and failed to understand what all the hubbub was about, but then I got the Riverside Chaucer and read the Middle English. Bada bing, he's now one of the authors from whom I receive the most unadulterated delight. He simply is the Medieval World Picture; just as Dante illustrates it for the cosmos, Chaucer illustrates it for material reality. As Dryden said, here indeed is God's plenty. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to read in the original language. It really is not very hard at all—take the time to learn the 30-40 unfamiliar words that appear most often, and then use the annotations to get through the rest (knowing Latin and/or German will also help immensely, but is, of course, not necessary). No translation can capture the sheer vigor, beauty, songfulness, and élan of this poetry. As of right now, the Knight, the Nun's Priest, and the Franklin hold the top prizes for me, but some day I will sit down and read it straight through for the first time. Then the winner of the contest can finally be objectively declared.

I need to get back to this half-read book - don't know why haven't I finished it, as it's quite entertaining....

Update Jan 2011: Finished! There's little that I can add to the appreciative reviews of this charming work, apart from observing that you you don't need to know anything about the historical context (late 14th-century England) to enjoy the collection.

Anyone who loves stories and the whole idea of storytelling will get a buzz from the Tales - they are packaged within the framework of a story-telling contest among a diverse group of pilgrims on the road to Canterbury, and there's quite a bit of (cheeky) attention to these narrators. Lively exchanges/responses of the pilgrims between the stories (and narratorial intrusions during them) lift their characters off the page, and because they represent many different walks of life and different social classes, there's a lot of voices to hear, each with its own pre-occupations and (fairly) fitting stylistic level, giving the whole a very multi-layered, and sometimes humorous, effect.

To those better acquainted with contemporary history, or with literary influences on Chaucer, the Tales would probably tell a great deal more, but to very uninformed me they still resonated and offered fascinating and informative glimpses into Chaucer's times, from attitudes to various aspects of life (the Church, the chivalric code, love, foreigners) to detail about every-day life and work.

I read Coghill's (highly-regarded) translation, and though I'm in no position to make judgements (not having looked at the original in Middle English) I can say it reads brilliantly and vividly, and retains rhythm and rhyme (many of Chaucer's Tales were composed in metre)which propels the stories on a pace. No sluggish tempos here!

Highly recommended to all story lovers!

Few years ago I read the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio, and while reading the Canterbury Tales I felt like I was back in time. I really enjoy reading the Medieval books, the romantic ones with the well known chivalry style, and noble characters.

On the contrary, Decameron and The Canterbury Tales represent more the "measly" middle ages. Thus the plague, the peasantry, the religious dogmas, and the real life of people from each degree such as the religious ones, nobles, and knights.

It is necessary to read these books in order to have a further comprehension about what is moral and unmoral, what is logical and not logical. Both Chaucer and Boccaccio wrote about stories that really happened in those times not because they wanted to make us judge a certain character or behavior, or worse they wanted to condemn those people. On the contrary, they simply wanted to show to us how people truly were back then. It doesn't matter how strongly the religious/else authority can impose people's behavior, the genuine human nature can't be changed or manipulated.

Short stories well written! They turned me back time 'cause believe it or not - once I was a kid also :)
Simple sentences and simple modern language which I really enjoyed it!

I read this in Middle English, so it was extremely challenging, but well worth the extra effort. The "Canturbury Tales" are a collection of stories, all but two of which, were written in verse. In the framing story, 24 pilgrims are on their way from Southwark to Canturbury to visit the Saint Thomas Becket shrine at Canturbury Cathedral. When they stop along the way, they entertain the group with tales, some serious, some hilarious, some racy, some satirical, and some laced with religious themes. The most famous of these is "The Knight's Tale," in which two friends, both knights, fall in love with the same woman. The funniest and bawdiest story is "The Miller's Tale," which includes extramarital sex, ass (ers) kissing, and farting! I'd highly recommend at least attempting to read the book in its original language, as the verses are incredibly beautiful and well-written. There are several versions that include either glossaries or interlinear translation which is necessary to fully understand the meaning of the text, but a strictly modern version will miss much of what makes Chaucer amazing.

The major themes of the book are the critique of the church, the problem of predestination and foreknowledge, themes of the inherent corruptness of human nature and decline of moral values, the problem of the position of women and marriage relationships, themes of honor and truth, and themes of Christian virtue and chivalry.

Entire literary journals are dedicated to the works of Chaucer, so it's hard to know how to say anything worthwhile about his most famous book. I'll settle for making some simple observations about a couple of the facets of the work I personally enjoyed: its form and authorial voice.

The Tales' format, famously modeled on Boccaccio's Decameron, has a frame narrative into which the discrete tales fit. Instead of plague-fleers, Chaucer's storytellers are a motley crew of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury Cathedral. With no authoritative original manuscript, The Tales have been transmitted down to us through various sources and compiled in various ways. Certain individual tales are unfinished, and the work as a whole seems incomplete as tales for a return journey back from Canterbury are intimated, but never told. But the benefit of the disjointed nature of these diverse stories, and the loose, basic construction of the frame means one doesn't feel too keenly the undone-ness.

This format allowed Chaucer to include tales that vary broadly as to source material, convention and style. He includes bawdy, hilarious stories (e.g., of course, The Wife of Bath's Tale), preachy and ponderous prose selections (e.g., The Parson's Tale), satiric cautionary tales (e.g., The Summoner's Tale), adventurous romances (e.g., The Knight's Tale), and so forth. The variety alone is highly entertaining and, for those interested in 14th-century daily life, social structures, et al., incidentally informative.

But for this reader the most interesting thing about the book is the slippery frame narrator, the ultimate teller of all the tales: a fictive Chaucer who is on the pilgrimage and relaying the journey as well as all of the stories. He even tells his own tales - first in poetry, Sir Thopas, which is humorously cut short for its terribleness, and then The Tale of Melibee, a dour moralizing tale in prose that reads more as a collection of aphorisms, quotes and bons mots than an actual story.

Fictively reproducing himself in his own pages, in addition to the multiplicity of in-frame narrative voices, destabilizes the narration and disallows any easy reading of what it is the real Chaucer may have believed, which attitudes on display he may have supported or decried. It's charming and so unexpectedly "meta" to hear a character of real Chaucer's tell fictive Chaucer:

"By God...to put it in a word,
Your awful rhyming isn't worth a turd!"

I've been struck of late how "post-modern" so much pre-modern literature can seem. When you aren't busy worrying about what is fiction and non-fiction - as we moderns tend to - the implications of authorial voice and narrativity perhaps seem obvious, and you don't have to create entire modes of linguistic and historical criticism (Hayden White, Jacques Derrida, I'm looking at you) to arrive at conclusions a writer 700 years ago arrived at quite naturally.

Having a slippery narrator, not being able to peg what is "true" and "untrue" with regards to what your author is thinking/feeling v. saying, is an incredibly fertile creative ground to tread upon. Introducing a series of stories, many with external sources, mimicking well-established literary conventions, placed in the mouths of fictional characters who represent a multiplicity of class, gender and social critiques and who include a novelistic version of yourself...it's simply a great way to explore tensions, irresolutions and contradictions, to convey complex commentary and, if the need should arise, to disavow it.

People who study this stuff for a living will be able to tell me how off base this observation is. I have only a well-informed amateur's knowledge of medieval literary tropes, habits of authorship and post-modern criticism. And it seems to me some scholar somewhere has surely written a dissertation upon Chaucer's authorial voice and post-modern thought.

Hopefully this person could also tell me where I can find the following:
A modern English translation of The Canterbury Tales as good as Raffel's, with facing-page Middle English text, and relatively extensive footnotes/annotation. That I would like to read.