The Canterbury Tales: Fifteen Tales and the General Prologue by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Canterbury Tales: Fifteen Tales and the General Prologue Reviews

• 
  Chris

  Writing a "review" of The Canterbury Tales is difficult, not because the book/collection isn't worthy of a review, but because it is so widely variant and has so many nuances to be discussed.
  
  For those who don't know, The Canterbury Tales is a book containing a bunch of stories told by individuals traveling together on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. The book is written in the late 1300s with the pilgrimage set in the same basic time. It begins with a "General Prologue" providing a description of each of the characters in the group as well as the "game" they'll be playing (that of telling stories on the way to Canterbury). Each pilgrim tells a different tale (well, not "all" of them...the work is "unfinished" in the sense that we're missing tales from some pilgrims). Some tales are set in their contemporary England while others are set in exotic lands, romantic settings, or ancient cultures.
  
  So what do you say in a brief review of The Canterbury Tales?
  
  To start with, I would suggest you try reading it in the original Middle English. The language/spelling/pronunciation can be a problem, so be sure you get an edition that's glossed (unless you're proficient in Middle English). During the semester, I found a "children's" edition of the tales at my local library. It included Modern English "translations" of a couple of the tales along with some illustrations. It was kind of fun to read, but it lost some of the rhythm and drive of the tales by having them in a modern format.
  
  Secondly, there are some bits that can be skipped, but it's difficult to identify which ones. For example, some might suggest that the entire Pardoner's Prologue (and much of his tale) can be ignored altogether and that you should just focus on the actual "tale" part of his tale. While his tale is entertaining and the reading would be much shorter if that's all you read, you would miss a TON of social and religious commentary which is very interesting. Similarly, the Wife of Bath has lengthy rambling passages in her Prologue and the Merchant includes numerous lengthy lists that have little bearing on the plot. It's difficult to create a good synopsis of what can safely be skipped, because it depends in a large extent on what you want to get out of it. Worse still, if you're reading in the unfamiliar Middle English, it's harder to quickly scan the text and get a feel for when the narrative has gotten back to the 'heart of the matter.'
  
  The writing is fun and clever (once you get through the 'translation' issues with the Middle English). For a common reference, it's like reading Shakespeare, only more archaic by a couple hundred years. The language of the narrative varies depending on the narrator of the particular prologue/tale, but with Chaucer at the helm behind the scenes, the writing is generally very good, descriptive, layered, humorous, inspiring, etc. (except for when he's trying to illustrate 'bad writing', and then it's good in that it's so bad).
  
  The messages presented are widely varied as well. The Knight's Tale was an intriguing tale of romance and chivalry with lots of courtly intrigue...but at times it felt a little dry. The Miller and the Reeve were hilarious tales and introduced me to a new (to me) genre in the fabliau. The Wife of Bath had an interesting prologue and a fun tale, again with a semi-romantic style and an interesting moral. The Nun's Priest gave us a fun little animal fable. The Prioress presented a strange little tale about miracles or anti-semitism or devout love or something else?
  
  Overall, I would definitely recommend having a copy of The Canterbury Tales on your shelf. Some tales are easier to read than others. Some tales are more fun while others are more thought provoking (as stated in one of the prologues, a tale has one of two purposes, to educate or to entertain...and there are examples of each). Once you get your teeth into the language (probably the biggest hurdle) I suspect you'll enjoy these.
  
  *****
  5 stars
• 
  Sydney ✨

  Finally finished this book after spending almost three months on it. It was pretty interesting. I think I would've preferred a translated version because I struggled with the old english. But our discussions in class about it helped and it was pretty funny. Who knew old books could be so entertaining lol.
• 
  WordsAreMyForte

  Wow, this was something alright.
• 
  Paul D. Miller

  I enjoyed Chaucer, especially the Knight’s Tale. There is a study to be done on rival views of marriage in the Tales, though I am not inclined to do it. What more struck me was the consistency of happy endings. There is one tale in which a prince marries a commoner, then tests her love by pretending to kill their children to see if she will continue to submit to him. He lets years pass, and the people come to hate him while she continues to love him. At this point, the Tale felt like something Edgar Allen Poe wrote, and I expected the Tale to end with the prince recognizing that he had become evil and no longer merited the love of such a queen as she, perhaps being overthrown by her as a test to see if he loved her in the process. Something like that, some series of events in which the roles are reversed and the lesson bends back upon its teacher. Nothing of the sort happens. The Prince eventually ends the test, brings the children back, declares that all is well, and they live happily ever after. The story is discordant to the modern reader. However, I did note that the narrator ends by saying that we shouldn’t love like the prince, we should take no lessons from his marriage. The story was meant more as a parable. As a parable of God’s sovereignty, it works, but as nothing else, which is why I suspect the Tale must be hated by modern readers.
• 
  Nicky

  I suppose it's a crime for an English Lit major to say this, but I'm not the biggest fan ever of Chaucer. We're studying the General Prologue, The Reeve's Tale and The Franklin's Tale, and none of it inspires me with great love. Just mostly indifference. I do like the way Chaucer plays with words.
  
  This edition is great because of all the supporting material, like the analogues and some essays.
• 
  H.J. Swinford

  I really enjoyed my first read of The Canterbury Tales and was surprised by how humorous it was. The supplemental material in the end of this edition was pretty interesting for the most part. Some of the excerpts I skimmed, but there was some cool stuff there.
• 
  Hope

  Maybe one two many fart jokes for me, but it was still good!
• 
  Stephanie

  Reading aloud from the Riverside Chaucer bit by bit with Eric, but want to be able to mark the completed texts separately—am going to tackle The House of Fame myself!
• 
  R

  I read this several times a year, or at least I read a good chunk of it, and I think I love it more each time that I read it.
• 
  Herdis Marie

  Ok, so, this is another one of those authors you should really just skip if you're not a huge literature geek.
  
  I read this in the original old English, which was ... well, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty freaking hard. I mean, you get into the language after a while, and it runs a little more smoothly, but still. Definitely not light bedtime reading.
  
  For me, reading "The Canterbury Tales" was chiefly interesting in an historical, literary sense. The tales themselves are too dated in their ideas (particularly about gender roles) and morality to have any real applicability in today's society, and I feel like their entertainment value is chiefly rooted in their (usually moral) themes. So a couple of the tales were kind of funny, but mostly they were just, well ... meh.
  
  (I realise this is not a strong literary point. But still.)
  
  Being a huge nerd (power to us), I also decided to read the scholarly material (which was about half of the book) in its entirety. Reading the tales that provided the background material for Chaucer's retellings was quite fascinating, but most of the scholarly articles that followed were frustrating to read. For one thing, so many of them focus on this seemingly indisputable idea that Chaucer was a literary genius. They spend a lot of time qualifying their arguments with the author's genius, which, seen from a modern viewpoint (especially if you've studied literature at uni), makes their arguments seem ill-founded and biased. I did enjoy a couple of the articles, though, one that delved into the tripartite nature of Chaucer in the tales, and "Eunuch Hermeneutics". Would recommend to lit nerds.
  
  Anyway, as mentioned above, only read this if you're a classic literature geek, or if you're really into medieval studies.
• 
  Lisa

  Gadzooks! I've finished the Canterbury Tales.
  I found it best to read it aloud until I was comfortable with the Middle English, once the rhyme patterns start to get established it's much easier to read because the brain predicts what the couplet should end with even if it's spelled in unexpected ways. (I don't know how well this would work if you don't have an English accent to start with).
  I also used Google
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cant..., reading the synopsis first so that I knew the outline before reading and could make more sense of it. But there are lots of little things that I picked up on in the full text that are not in the Google synopses so it's no substitute for reading the real thing. On the other hand I probably would have missed the subtleties in the prologues without Google, especially the way succeeding tales undercut the one before, as each teller tries to outdo, or contradict his/her predecessor.
  And now I must read The Decameron, because Chaucer drew on it for more than one tale!
• 
  Joel Wally

  Did not read all of this, but read the a good bit of it for a class. I'm so glad I read it in a class as well. Certain tales are more enjoyable than others, but it truly is remarkable how enjoyable it still is to read today. The Middle English gets easier to read the further you get into it, and the way Chaucer works with language is remarkable and subversive. I read the General Prologue, the Knight's Tale, the Miller's Tale, the Wife of Bath's Tale, the Pardoner's Tale, and the Nun's Priest's Tale, and I loved each and every one of them. I tried to read the Clerk's Tale, but that one was a bit more difficult for me in subject matter to get through. What I read from the book was amazing though, and I am so glad to have had the guidance of a class to help me get the most out of the Tales!
• 
  AB

  Read for ENG 346A. I feel like I'm cheating a little here because I have to review some of the tales (and all of the analogues -- damn you, Boccaccio!) for the exam, but classes ended today, so it seemed like a good time. At least one of those stars is for my professor, who is fantastic and who, particularly when it comes to letting me talk him into the ground, has the patience of a saint. (Were it not for him, I'd be taking away one of those stars for the Reeve, who makes me physically ill.)
• 
  Clarice

  The Canterbury Tales is one of the greatest works in English language. Through this masterpiece, Geoffrey Chaucer provide us this remarkable co-existence of different points of view, portraying the diversity that happen in real life among different people and important insights about life in the middle ages. For being a collection of distinct stories, it may give the idea that each piece should be approached individually. However, the unifying components found throughout the tales indicate that some tales can and should be thought together.
• 
  Andreas

  Wonderful edition of a true classic which preserves the original text and adds extensive explanations so that a modern reader can enjoy it. English is not my native language and I was surprised about a couple of similarities to German, especially Low-German. Very interesting and exciting to see how the meaning of words has changed over time.
  
  I had some fun moments trying to read the poems aloud to get a feeling for the medieval English and the rhymes. My neighbours were quite amused. :-)
• 
  Alynn Mahle

  This man wrote the book...and taught the class. As a grad student, I had the honor of taking a Chaucer class with Glending Olsen, this author, at Cleveland State University. He had a command of the OE language (Chaucer's original version is included alongside the translation, which makes this book a real find) as well as a wealth of knowledge about the life and times of Chaucer. I have a signed copy--a prized memento from my college years. Fabulous book!
• 
  Annabelle

  My copy of the book was part of the collection we had in our basement library. It is so old, Goodreads doesn't even have the edition on file. I read this* when I was twelve or thirteen, randomly picked it out of the shelf the way kids click a movie on Netflix today. And whoa, it was pretty risqué, with practically everyone and his raunchy cook acting out scenes from a 1980s sex comedy. Think fifteenth century Porky's.
  
  * An abridged version for sure.
• 
  Steve

  It's ribald, penetrating. Interesting not only for Chaucer's expertly veiled critique of 14th century England, but increasingly so in light of his having read it before the court. To think that he criticized the very crown before him without the other having the slightest idea of it is almost impossible to believe. In fact, did I invent that history?
  
  
  
  
• 
  Cole Jack

  I love the Cantebury Tales, but was not pleased with this Norton Critical Edition. The footnotes and gloss were not the best I've read on Cantebury Tales and missed key things other versions I've seen have covered. Also, the accompanying critical and contextual sources missed pieces I would have liked to seen. I had professors who refused to use this version when teaching and now I see why.
• 
  Daniel Wright

  The format of this edition is, without a doubt, the best way to read Chaucer: the original Middle English, with a gloss of unfamiliar words in the margin. It's a pity it feels the need to miss out six of them with no explanation, or even a note to flag up the lacuna.
• 
  Matthew Valdez

  I actually love the Canterbury Tales. It's obviously challenging to read sometimes but the glosses in this version helped me out quite a bit. Chaucer has a masterpiece here and his stories are funny, witty, and quite unique. Read for my Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton class.
• 
  Cecilia

  Surprisingly, this is funnier in Middle English than in our English. It's harder to read certainly, but it's funnier that way. And listening to a lecture on this was definitely eye-opening in terms of understanding the book better. Thanks Hillsdale!
• 
  Steve

  Bawdy and hilarious--go for the Miller's Tale, Merchant's Tale, and Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale (of course).
• 
  Ben

  Thanks to the original Middle English, this is half-a-pain to read. But the stories are good enough that it's OK. Still, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who's not reading it for a class.