Ourselves and the Fourteenth Century, 27 Aug 2002

The immortal Canterbury Tales is a must for all lovers of great literature. What we can witness in this noble poem "is the concise portrait of an entire nation: high and low, old and young, male and female, rogue and righteous, land and sea, town and country", as Nevill Coghill describes in his introduction to this translation. The past has become magical to us through the great works of Epic poetry; where the Greeks had Homer, and the Roman's Virgil; the English have none other than Geoffrey Chaucer.

It is only infrequently that we can find classic ideas that have captured readers throughout the ages, be it Pickwick's proposed adventure to study his fellow men, Dante's quest for his beloved Beatrice, or indeed Chaucer's undying Pilgrimage; The Canterbury Tales manifests its own unique appeal in an immortal journey through the Tales of many different voices.

On the Eve of a Pilgrimage from a London Cheapside Inn to St Thomas a Becket's shrine in Canterbury, a group of thirty pilgrims are challenged by the inn's Host to a competition: to while away their morrow's journey by each telling a tale; on returning to London their Host will then decided the best storyteller: and their reward? a luxurious meal on behalf of that Pilgrim's fellows. What follows are many tales, of many varieties: those of courtly love, bawdy comedy, fresh wit, menacing macabre, didactic fables, in short, to use John Dryden's words "God's plenty".

But it is the prologue to Chaucer's great collection of tales that marks its individuality from the Likes of Ovid, Petrarch and Boccaccio - of whom some of the tales are largely indebted to. The translator of this edition advocates that "in all literature there is nothing that touches or resembles the prologue". And this is by all means a cogent argument: what we witness at the beginning of Tales is patchwork quilt of Medieval England, a Tapestry of Chaucer's times, or if you like: a doorway into a world long faded away.

The prologue simply follows the task of introducing the diverse tellers of the Tales, and yet in doing so it records a valuable sample of history. William Blake faithfully promulgates the Prologue's vitality by declaring that: "Chaucer is himself the great poetical observer of men, who in every age is born to record and eternize its acts". The Pilgrims are not only well presented characters, they are also true embodiments of normality. What we see in the Tales is not just a snap-shot of Olde England, but something indeed far bigger: a blueprint of our own society's individuals - "the perennial progeny of men and women". What Chaucer portrays to us in his Canterbury Tales is nothing greater than our very selves.

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Understandable and Enjoyable, 4 Mar 2006

By	Peter Kenney (Birmingham, Alabama, USA) - See all my reviews

Chaucer spoke and wrote in the London dialect of Middle English which was popular during his time. In THE CANTERBURY TALES he used the device of having a diverse group of people tell two tales each while traveling together on a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury, the location of the Shrine of St. Thomas A' Becket.

Almost every social type of the fourteenth century is represented among the pilgrims such as a knight, lawyer, doctor, cook, miller, nun, merchant, monk, priest, squire and several others. Chaucer is also one of the pilgrims. Readers will recognize many of the characters as being reminiscent of their twenty-first century contemporaries. The physician, for instance, loves gold and makes a lot of money during times of pestilence. He also has a close and mutually profitable relationship with an apothecary.

Anyone who recalls being introduced to Chaucer as a student long ago will find the modern texts and translations a welcome change. The result is a Chaucer who is both understandable and very enjoyable.

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