Brady Meyer > Recent Status Updates

Towards the beginning of my adult reading journey that started a year and a half ago, I re-read C&P after having not read a work of classic literature since high school. I'm excited to come back to it now, after months and months of learning 'how' to read works like this, with a newer edition and smoother translation!

No one paints St. Peterburg's sweltering summer stench like Dostoevsky.

Fragment 3/10 done, including the Friar's and Summoner's Tales, featuring a devilish fiend, some greedy men of the church, and a fart.

Wasn't expecting to be so emotionally devastated by a sci-fi book this early on a Saturday but here we are.

We have finally met the Wife of Bath and as a result, life is so grand.

Fragment 2/8 done, the Man of Law's Tale.

"I knew him, Horatio," said the drunken poet. "A man of infinite jest. Not one of them funny. A real horse's ass, Horatio."

With the Reeve's Tale and the unfinished Cook's Tale complete, I'm done with the first major section of text.

The Miller's Tale is surely why people still read Chaucer: unbelievably bawdy and risque with a fantastic comic payoff.

The Knight's Tale, the longest story in the collection, is complete! I've now switched to entirely Middle English, just referring to the Oxford translation for end notes and occasional clarifications. Chaucer's language is simply so beautiful it deserves to be read in its original.

"This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo, / And we been pilgrymes, passynge to and fro. / Deeth is an ende of every wordly soore."

TIL that in Elizabethan England, those less off would attempt to dye their teeth black in order to appear like they were wealthy enough to enjoy lots of sugar.

Having finished the Prologue again, but in Middle English, we are now into the lengthy Knight's Tale (part 1 of 4 done, in both Modern and Middle English).

General Prologue complete! Such fun, but the clouds of Middle English are on the horizon...

Episode 8, Lestrygonians, complete!