V. A. Kolve

Since I was hanging around Kent and had been walking the ancient pilgrimage route, I thought I should get to know its most famous literary product. I finally found this book in a charity shop in Canterbury itself, and it seemed perfect - while it only contains fifteen of the tales (and some of those excerpts), fully half the book is made up of contextual information and analysis, so I could truly understand the work.
I was a little intimidated at first at the idea of reading in Middle show more English, but soon found that although it does take an effort, the poetic form of most of the tales naturally encouraged me to keep reading.
I found the Canterbury Tales a lot more engaging than the Decameron, mostly because the variety of characters were given strong and memorable personalities which occasionally would come into conflict. I could only imagine the knight's horror as his proud tale of honour and love is followed up by a slew of fart jokes and personal attacks.
On the other hand as a modern reader I found the Tales seemed a lot more hostile to women than the Decameron. It soon became tedious to read all the whinging about the terrible curse of marriage and the fickleness of wives. At least we women have the Wife of Bath in our corner!
The contextual material that followed was quite good, but the analysis...well it reminded me why I quit studying English literature despite being good enough to earn a scholarship: the tendency for literary analysis to be filled with insufferable pomposity that masks a distinct lack of substance.
On the one hand, one of the included essays did provide an interesting response to my biggest issue with the work, pitching the various stories involving marriage as a debate that concludes in support of marital harmony. And there were a few other useful tidbits I managed to pick up, like the contradictory character of the Prioress - her propriety perhaps hiding a hateful heart.
On the other, it took me about three times as long to read this section as it did the rest of the book combined. When it is easier to read actual non-Englishthan the modern English essays discussing it, I think there is an issue. Of course, this book is intended for university-level students of English literature so it could be a matter of me being the wrong audience, and I'd hate to be one of those "I don't understand it, therefore it's bad" cretins, but I can't help but feel the obfuscating language was covering for a lack of real substance.
An okay introduction, but in future I'll probably seek out a different version! show less

Sometimes half a loaf is worse than none.

The idea here is intriguing. Take nine of the best and most important Canterbury Tales and surround them with enough commentary to truly make them understandable. And certainly the editors did a good job of choosing the nine tales. There is the Franklin's Tale, the best metrical romance ever written in English. There is the Wife of Bath's Tale, another beautiful romance, which of course also has a fascinating prologue. There is the Knight's Tale, show more Chaucer's "philosophical romance." There are the two best-known dirty tales, the Miller's and the Reeve's. There is the beautiful exemplum of the Pardoner's Tale, and its awful enclosing account. There is the light-hearted bird fable of the Nun's Priest's Tale. And, to show just a sample of the darker tales, there is the murderous Prioress's tale and the brutal Clerk's Tale.

The text is good although it is not the very best -- it is basically that of Skeat's edition rather than the newer Riverside Chaucer. The glossing is very thorough; there should be no great problem understanding the meaning. So far, so good.

It's the additional essays that don't seem quite sufficient to me. The book includes roughly 300 pages of commentary (on 200 pages of text), but 200 of those commentary pages are examples of sources -- and, too often, the sources are either not all that useful or too easily found elsewhere. Better to refer readers to something like Robert P. Miller's Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds than to leave such chopped down source material and be left with so little room for commentary.

For commentary, when reading Chaucer, is vital. We need to understand romances, and fabliau, and beast tales. We need to know the attitudes that would allow something like The Clerk's Tale to seem pathetic rather than horrid. We need to understand Chaucer's sense of irony. We need to understand the forgotten virtues of gentilesse and trouthe. Chaucer was a genius who foresaw many of the changes since his time (especially regarding the relations between men and women) -- but he was a medieval man, with a medieval set of attitudes (trouthe, the noblest of all virtues, seems now to be considered a vice!). The Tales need more context than they are given. To me, it seems as if it would be better to give the full tales (which are, after all, their own context!) or to go with the reduced set and supply at least twice as much commentary. As a classroom text for a medieval literature class, this would probably do well. But as a true commentary on the Canterbury tales, I can only saw -- whole loaf or none. show less

Wikipedia assures me that by the time Canterbury Tales was written, the frame story was a tried and true storytelling technique. If so, I really wish Chaucer had made better use of it - like actually having things happen DURING the frame story - make it a story in and of itself, rather than a raft for the rest of the stories.

That being said, the stories themselves fulfill my "law of collection" - the good, the bad, the pointless. My favorite is the Wife of Bath's tale.

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 show more 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 show less