The Canterbury Tales: Nine Tales and the General Prologue

by Geoffrey Chaucer

Here are tales told by members from all parts of English society of the 14th century, reflecting on life as they travel the road from Southwark to Canterbury.

Genres: Classics, Poetry, Fiction, Literature, Short Stories, Medieval, Read For School

552 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1989

About the author

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son, Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament.
Among Chaucer's many other works are The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women, and Troilus and Criseyde. He is seen as crucial in legitimising the literary use of Middle English when the dominant literary languages in England were still Anglo-Norman French and Latin. Chaucer's contemporary Thomas Hoccleve hailed him as "the firste fyndere of our fair langage" (i.e., the first one capable of finding poetic matter in English). Almost two thousand English words are first attested to in Chaucerian manuscripts. As scholar Bruce Holsinger has argued, charting Chaucer's life and work comes with many challenges related to the "difficult disjunction between the written record of his public and private life and the literary corpus he left behind". His recorded works and his life show many personas that are "ironic, mysterious, elusive [or] cagey" in nature, ever-changing with new discoveries.

Reviews

[Spike Gomes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Other than a modern translation of the Pardoner's Tale, which I read in high school for an assignment, I've never read much of the Canterbury Tales. Now, since I feel an urge to read as much of the Great Classics before I die, I figured I might as well get this one out of the way. Well, partially, anyway. This Norton Critical Edition only has the General prologue and nine of the tales, though the nine selected are the ones that are generally accepted as the best of the twenty-eight.

This particular edition is in a standardized form of Middle English that regularizes the varied spelling between editions and discards unfamiliar old letters and inserts newer ones like “j” and “u” as necessary. While some might consider this a travesty, it makes the slow going in reading a bit faster. This is a pretty slow read, to be sure. Poetry usually takes longer to read than prose because one needs to listen to the verse parsed in one's internal voice and not zoom along at the speed of reading comprehension. This is complicated by the fact that besides the archaic language, which, thankfully, is heavily glossed and footnoted in this edition, one must listen to it taking into account the fact that Middle English is pronounced quite differently from modern English. To be honest I never quite got the hang of it in my head, but fudging it works often enough to keep the rhythm going.

Content-wise the tales in and of themselves are both products of their medieval times and endlessly timeless at once. Irony, satire, social criticism, nuance... they were all alive and well long before Gutenberg came along with his invention. I was a little struck by how bawdy the Miller and the Reeve's Tales were. Now I'm hardly surprised why we barely touched upon the book in our high school English class. I kind of do wonder how the Victorians handled all the stuff about ass-kissing, farting, and graphic cuckoldry back in the day.

I was also struck by how revolutionary and modern the views expounded by the Wife of Bath in her prologue were... as well how even-handed Chaucer was in her depiction and in the quiet rebuttal delivered by the Clerk in his tale. I really got to wonder how obtuse some people reviewing this book are when they complain about how sexist it all is when Chaucer was literally centuries ahead of his time in his views of women actually having agency, opinions and desires of their own that were contrary to men and that well, was just part of life that needed to be accepted. Yeah, the Wife of Bath is kind of a shrew and a good-time girl, but in the end her general argument does have a point.

Honestly, though, the Nun's Priest's tale is my favorite. Why? Because I love chickens, and Chaucer just anthropomorphizes them perfectly. How else can you have a rooster debating Boethius, Greek history and Christian theology with his hen wife in one moment, and then have them act like perfectly normal chickens the next? People underestimate the comedic potential of chickens.

The historical and source texts that follow the selected tales are pretty valuable. Some of them like Boccacio's Decameron I will have to visit on their own in the future. Other texts provide a counterpoint of how Chaucer either drew on several sources to synthesize a story, or reworked a rather blah source story into something more interesting or complex. The critical texts are kind of hit and miss for me. The older scholarly works seem to have more descriptive and interpretative value than the more recent ones, but then I'm personally allergic to any sort of classical structuralism and its derivatives.

So is it worth it to get this particular copy of The Canterbury Tales? Overall, I'd say yes, because of the deep annotations and secondary works, however, I'd be hesitant to let this be the only copy that one has of the Tales since it is incomplete (well, more incomplete than the unfinished text in entirety, but I jest). If one can recommend a version in the comments that is in a well annotated version of the Middle English, please mention it below! I currently have one from the Britannica Great Books translation from the 50s, but it's a parallel text that appears to be mildly bowdlerized. So how to rate? All in all, it's probably not going to please the completest and it's not going to draw in the casual reader, nor should it be the only copy on your shelf. So 4 out of 5 stars.

[Rivkah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I forbid anyone to read these tales in modern English. Half the fun of reading them is trying to translate the Middle English. These are great earthy tales of fairies, knights, and fiery hot pokers to the rear. Good stuff.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's not much to say about the Canterbury Tales that hasn't been said, I'm sure. My dad used to recite them to me in the Middle English. About five years ago I memorized the the General Prologue, the first 100 lines or so of The Knight's Tale, and a particularly intense scene from the tournament for the purpose of reciting them to someone else someday. Every April I get a hankering to read portions of this book. One day I might read it all. I know I always enjoy the text, but it also reminds me of my father and I'm sure always will. I especially recommend reading this out loud. Not only does it help to understand but it's just really fun. There are many good pronunciation guides and some sample audio files available online, just in case you don't have a dad who studied English literature to read them to you.

[Lizzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really glad I took this Chaucer class. There was so much to pick up on that I never would have! I love how each pilgrim is unique, and their tales reflect them in ways that even they don't fully understand.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Canterbury Tales is such a cornerstone of English literature that I think any serious reader ought to have a go at them. This edition, which was my daughter's cast-off college textbook, is not an easy read, but I think it's worth the effort to read the Tales in the original Middle English to appreciate the rhythm of the verse, and the generous annotation makes it possible. The nine Tales and General Prologue make up about half this book. The remaining half presents first contemporary or earlier works that Chaucer is likely to have drawn on as inspiration for the tales, followed by a number of critical essays. I found most of the source material pretty interesting; Boccaccio's Decameron is now on my reading list. The critical essays range from enlightening to soporific slogs. Sensitive readers should be aware that many of the tales deal with sexual themes and body function references, one of them describes a marital relationship is frankly abusive, and one of them describes an anti-Semitic hate crime.

[Stephen Heiner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This selection of nine tales also features some helpful critical essays (that's why you get a Norton edition) and is a helpful reminder of how language develops. Even as a native speaker my reading has to slow down significantly to take in the meanings of Middle English, centuries removed from the English we speak today.

We keep reading these tales because human nature never changes and the timeless lessons Chaucer offers us in these stories can never be heard enough.

"Thy gentillesse cometh fro God allone.
Thanne cometh oure verray gentillesse of grace:
It was nothing biquethe us with oure place."
(p. 133)

[Oliver Brauning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chaucer is the best. It's so much fun to read these aloud in your own Middle English accent, at least if you're a sicko like me. I wish I knew more about medieval astrology because it seems to be one of the main unifying elements between all the tales, along with the social position of women and the Providence of God vs. free will debate. I don't know if anyone else has looked at people like Chaucer has, seen seriously that we're all drunkards, liars, lechers, bigots of all sorts, and yet declared that we're all worthy of respect. The Canterbury Tales is probably the most humanist book ever written.

[Michael Adam Reale · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books. I read it in it's original Middle English. I apologize in advance if this is in anyway offensive but I once read that a translation is like a woman, if it is beautiful then it's not faithful and it it's faithful then it's not beautiful.

It was in our our English Literature class. I attended "Christian" Schools growing up. How this ever passed by the council of teachers is beyond me.

These are bawdy tales. An example would be “The Tale of the Wyf of Bathe”:

"Lo, here the wise kyng, daun Salomon;
I trowe he hadde wyves mo than oon;
As wolde God it were leveful unto me
To be refresshed half so ofte as he!"

[Maria · Rating 1 out of 5]

Picture this: English is your third language, and you take a mandatory English Lit. course in college. It's your second semester. All is well until the professor drops this and La Morte d'Arthure in their original medieval english version on you and still expects analysis and essays almost weekly while you have 8 other courses to worry about.

You barely manage to pass the course and you think to yourself that English, though hard, could've been so much worse if it had stagnated.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better than I imagined it would be, but what is with all the preaching at the end? That kind of ruined it for me. I was hoping there would be a return to the more light-hearted nature of the restofit, but instead it was heavily Biblical w references to Solomon ad nauseum.

[Rick Hribko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to read it for college. Maybe the full Canterbury tales collection would be more to my liking

[samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

slutty pilgrims!

[Tessbrule · Rating 2 out of 5]

did not like. but fun writing style.

[Ana Sofia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Otro read para mi clase, el medieval english esta complejo pero esta chistoso como Chaucer describe a sus personajes comparados con la teoria de los humors.

[H]

Knight's Tale: courtly love, Palamon/Arcite <3 Emelye
Miller's Tale: fabliau; 2nd Flood, student <3 carpenter's wife
Reeve's Tale: fabliau; miller steals wheat, students cuckold in retaliation
Wife of Bath: knight's punishment to find what women want (mastery over lover)
Franklin's Tale: Breton lai; Arveragus <3 Dorigen <3 Aurelius
Monk's Tale: de casibus tragedies; 17 shorts of famous men's falls
Nun's Priest's Tale: beast fable; chanticleer & the fox
Pardoner's Tale: hypocrisy; includes parable of 3 rioters
Clerk's Tale: Griselda's husband tests her like Job
Sir Thopas: shy narrator "Chaucer"; burlesque Romance; knight <3 elf-queen but -> Sir Oliphant
Parson's Tale: ostensible end; prose treatise on virtuous leaving

[Bcoghill Coghill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am going to try to read Canterbury Tales in Middle English. The rhymes are so much better then the "translated" versions that I have read. I am thinking of Neville Coghill's, which is heady stuff or a 1902 translation I read awhile back which was, to my mind, more simple and earthy like Chaucer but the authors were more reserved, probably the Victorian era influence and the beginning of the Century.
So wish me luck. I am reading "The Canterbury Tales, Nine Tales and the General Prologue" edited by V.A. Kolve and Glending Olson, The Norton Critical Edition. This is a school book but I think I will get more out of it through my independent study.
Be a Life Long Learner!

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Canterbury Tales was a great project of the Middle Ages -- it's unfortunate that Chaucer never got to complete the vast enterprise before his death. If you have the time and patience, reading though the tales in Middle English is a special experience. But for the time-strapped, pick up a prose version and you'll enjoy it anyway. This book is also an exemplar of character sketches through each of the three narrative techniques: (1) what they say, (2) what is said to them, and (3) what is said about them.

[Shelley · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I've actually read (in Middle English):
-The General Prologue: Lovely portraits, massively entertaining.
-The Knight's Tale: Long and dull, more fun to write about than to actually read.
-The Miller's Tale & The Reeve's Tale: Two hilarious fabliaus that showcase medieval raunchiness.
-The Nun's Priest's Tale: I still remember the courtly courtesy Chuantecleer the Rooster pays to his lady wife (a hen). Hilarious.

[Thara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I almost gave it a third star for "The Miller's Tale" but decided against it. Seriously, I hate Chaucer. I know sexism is just a calling card of the times, but it's ridiculous. Oh, wait, I'm going to give it a third star just for David Daniels's read-aloud during class, because it was definitely one of my favorite moments of undergrad.

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no question as to why Chaucer is considered a master. He masked his issues with marriage, society and people with clever, enjoyable tales. The language is beautiful and challenging yet, still understandable.

Chaucer is an artist--he takes complex subjects and projects them to the reader in simple, entertaining stories.

[Dani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Obviously a tough read. But if you stick with it, you get used to it. I just think the development of human language is fascinating, so I really liked the contrast of words used then, to words used now. Even the phonetics is just really interesting. This version is awesome too because of the annotations, helps a ton!

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Required reading for an online course at Hillsdale College on the Great Books 101. Reminiscent of Voltaire and Rabelais, wrestling with the ME provided a severe pleasure. I only read the Prologue, Knight's Tale, and Nun's Priest Tale. A very worthwhile endeavor, I recommend wrestling, but with the help of marginal notes this edition provides.

[Andrew Reid · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have only read the prolouge and a few tales. The tales are okay. I appreciate the size of the project the author is tackling in attempting to write two tales for each traveler. Geez... well, some of the tales are pretty funny.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

We read all these tales in college and my teacher, who was a Chaucer expert, made us do oral presentations where we had to quote lines using the old english style. It was so awesome and hard to understand. It sounds like German.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for anyone wanting to get the fullest representation of the historical development of the English language and storytelling. Sound out your pronunciations, folks!

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

This version is in middle english but it can be read without knowing the language. I suggest reading it modern englsh

[Mimi · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say?! I'm an English major. Loved them ---- Chaucer was spot on for character description.

[Mr. Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

read in the spring. gets better ever time.

[Patti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Salacious, funny and interesting. I love the middle english. I read it for a Brit Lit class in college and really enjoyed it.

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This still cracks me up. Snarkolicious, but so few get the jokes these days.