- Paperback: 528 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Classic; 1st New impression edition (Jan 1 1951)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0140440224
- ISBN-13: 978-0140440225
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.7 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 318 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,307,745 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
From Amazon
On a spring day in April--sometime in the waning years of the 14th century--29 travelers set out for Canterbury on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett. Among them is a knight, a monk, a prioress, a plowman, a miller, a merchant, a clerk, and an oft-widowed wife from Bath. Travel is arduous and wearing; to maintain their spirits, this band of pilgrims entertains each other with a series of tall tales that span the spectrum of literary genres. Five hundred years later, people are still reading Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. If you haven't yet made the acquaintance of the Franklin, the Pardoner, or the Squire because you never learned Middle English, take heart: this edition of the Tales has been translated into modern idiom.
From the heroic romance of "The Knight's Tale" to the low farce embodied in the stories of the Miller, the Reeve, and the Merchant, Chaucer treated such universal subjects as love, sex, and death in poetry that is simultaneously witty, insightful, and poignant. The Canterbury Tales is a grand tour of 14th-century English mores and morals--one that modern-day readers will enjoy. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Like Charles Lamb's edition of Shakespeare, Hastings's loose prose translation of seven of Chaucer's tales is more faithful to the work's plot than to the poet's language. This is not a prudish retelling (even the bawdy Miller's tale is included here) but the vigor of Chaucer's text is considerably tamed. In the original, the pilgrims possess unique voices, but here the tone is uniformly bookish. The colloquial speech of the storyteller is replaced by formal prose; for example, while Cohen (see review above) directly translates Chaucer's "domb as a stoon" as "silent as stones," Hastings writes "in solemn silence." Cartwright's startling paintings skillfully suggest the stylized flatness of a medieval canvas, but often without the accompanying richness of detail. Like Punch and Judy puppets, the faces and voices of these pilgrims are generally representative but lack the life and charm of the original text. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
For most readers the Canterbury Tales mean the General Prologue, with its gallery of portraits, and a few of the more humorous tales. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
For most readers the Canterbury Tales mean the General Prologue, with its gallery of portraits, and a few of the more humorous tales. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Passable Version, but...,
By Annabelle (Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Penguin Classics Canterbury Tales (Paperback)
While this is one of the better translations of The Tales I've seen, it's still unfortunately a translation. Even with a perfect translation, much of the rhyming and character of the original is lost. On the other hand, you can also lose much of the essence of the story by reading the Middle English text simply because the vocabulary can be so different (even though most of the time you can guess the meaning). Your best bet is to buy a copy of The Tales that keeps the original text but adds a line-by-line translation. The book may be twice as thick, but this way you can both read it the way Chaucer intended it to be, and read the translation right under the original words in case you're completely baffled by the vocabulary. I recently found a copy like that at a garage sale for 50 cents. It was the best 50 cents I've spent in a long time.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable translation,
By
This review is from: Penguin Classics Canterbury Tales (Paperback)
I enjoy the translation. I think it's ideal for the classroom. I can appreciate the tales that are streamlined for ease. It's very easy to follow.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Read this, not the Cliff Notes...,
By JR Pinto (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Penguin Classics Canterbury Tales (Paperback)
The Canterbury Tales were almost ruined for me by my freshman English Lit class. They insisted on making us read it from The Norton Anthology of Literature, which of course is untranslated. This is pointless. Unless one is a specialist or going for a doctorate there is no point in reading The Canterbury Tales in Middle English with all those endless footnotes. It takes one of the greatest books in English Literature - or World Literature, for that matter - and makes it torture. I have no need of "thilke" or "willhem" or "clepen." That is why Nevill Coghill's translation is such a boon. Now we can enjoy it in our own language the way the fourteenth-century English did (in truth, it is not that hard to translate as many of the words stay the same). I have taken to reading it, not as a novel, but as a collection of short stories - skipping around as I please. I think it is agreed that the best parts art the Miller's Tale, The Pardoner's Tale, and The Wife of Bath (and the Prologue, of course) which makes for excellent starting points.
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