Joseph Glaser's translation of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is wonderfully readable and entertaining. His translation makes the work easily accessible to modern readers providing a poetic rhythm and rhyme that hints of Chaucer's own poetry.

The Tales themselves range from the devout to the vulgarly humorous. Most delightful are the characters brought to life within the Tales. ( )

modern English

I'd say it's more like 3.5 stars, but we round up in my family.

Some great stuff and some duds, and that's perfectly fine. When I was really in the mood for this book, even a dud story didn't bother me because the feeling of the rhymes carried me along; it was almost like listening to music in a foreign language, pleasant for the sounds if not the content. The great stuff was a treat no matter my mood, and at times I actually gasped aloud in shock and delight at the raunchiness. ( )

High 3.



Favourite stories:


- The Knight's Tale
- The Nun's Priest's Tale
- The Friar's Tale
- The Franklin's Tale



"The Canterbury Tales" is one of those classics which I'd always intended on reading "when I got around to it", but I would quite easily have reached the end of my life and it still be collecting dust at the bottom of the "to read" pile. It wasn't until I bought a copy of Dan Simmons "Hyperion" that I'd decided to bump it up on the priority list.
I haven't read Hyperion, but after realising it was in fact a sort of homage to The Canterbury Tales I decided that I would read Chaucers unfinished epic first.


I was pleasantly surprised. No - I didn't read it in the original middle English, and I soon found it a fruitless endeavour to track down what the "best" translation was since almost everyone bar the translators seemed to be of the opinion that the best translation is no translation at all.
Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to learn to read Middle English just so I can appreciate the Canterbury Tales that little bit more; in the same way that I wouldn't learn German to read Kafka or Italian for Dante. So instead I picked up the first copy I found in Oxfam, and took it home to read.


I of course can't really draw a comparison between this translation and the original middle English - although I did read some passages alongside the original online - but as far as I could tell, it didn't feel too modernised. Although it rhymes and reads like poetry, every now and again the flow is sacrificed for the sake of accuracy; and so you get the impression that accuracy was what the translator was striving for.


HOWEVER: My biggest qualm with this translation is that it is missing two stories INTENTIONALLY. This is done for the sake of apparently sparing the modern reader from the great chore of battling his/her way through what is supposedly the most boring story (written in prose) in the book (told by Chaucers character!), and the last tale which is apparently nothing more than a drawn out sermon.
Well this modern reader likes to know that when he purchases The Canterbury Tales, he gets the complete (although technically incomplete) Canterbury Tales, and not an abridgement. I can decide whether it's boring or not, or even if I want to read it or not!


Anywho it was an enjoyable read. A mixed bag of tragedy and romance and comedy and sauce and dirt and politics and points being made about the church and women and all that flippedy-do. There are good stories and "meh" stories and so I will not reward this classic with the traditional 5 stars that all classics are assumed to deserve. I will slap on a 4 (high 3), for it was thoroughly enjoyed.
Sure. If I'd learnt Middle English and read the original then I may yet have given it 5. I may have showered it's supposed genius with glorious praise had I lived in the 14th century.... Or I might have shunned it.


Who knows?


Either way, having read a translation, I am satisfied. Maybe one day I'll go back read the original, but for now...


ONTO HYPERION! ( )

Chaucer has better pieces, but the Tales are good reading. ( )