The Broadview Canterbury Tales is a new edition of the complete tales in a text based on the famous Ellesmere Manuscript. Here one may read a Middle English text that is closer to what Chaucer's scribe, Adam Pinkurst, actually wrote than that in any other modern edition. Unlike most editions, which draw on a number of manuscripts to recapture Chaucer's original intention, this edition preserves the text as it was found in one influential manuscript. Spellings have not been standardized, the order of the lines and passages has not been altered, the text has only been emended when absolutely necessary for sense, and the original marginal glosses are noted throughout. The edition includes English glosses on the side of the page, and the introduction and notes address aspects of medieval culture, history, and language that may need explanation. A sampling of illustrations from the original manuscript is also included, along with a selection of other works that give the reader a rich sense of the cultural, political, and literary worlds in which Chaucer lived.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"This new Broadview edition by Robert Boenig and Andrew Taylor offers students an ideal means to read, study, and appreciate Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The scholarly introduction discusses Chaucer's life, the formal features of his extraordinary tale collection, its historical reception, and modern critical approaches to the text. Based on the Ellesmere Manuscript, this attractive, readable edition features Chaucer's Middle English text, marginal glosses, explanatory footnotes, and illustrative facsimile pages. Especially helpful are the appended background documents, historical and literary, which provide key contexts for the interpretation of Chaucer's work. A useful bibliography concludes the volume. Highly recommended." - Ann W. Astell, University of Notre Dame
"Britain's greatest medieval poem by its greatest non-dramatic poet: this new edition will be attractive to students, scholars, and general readers alike. The layout is inviting. Glosses in the margin and explanatory notes at the foot of the page insure easy access to all the necessary linguistic and historical expertise. Boenig and Taylor have done a wonderful job synthesizing the latest scholarship. The decision to concentrate on a single manuscript, the redoubtable Ellesmere, is a sound one. Facsimiles of individual leaves from that manuscript have been scattered throughout the volume to give us a real sense of what it would have been like to open The Canterbury Tales for the first time in the years immediately following Chaucer's death." - Larry Scanlon, Rutgers Universit --Larry Scanlon, Rutgers University
"Britain's greatest medieval poem by its greatest non-dramatic poet: this new edition will be attractive to students, scholars, and general readers alike. The layout is inviting. Glosses in the margin and explanatory notes at the foot of the page insure easy access to all the necessary linguistic and historical expertise. Boenig and Taylor have done a wonderful job synthesizing the latest scholarship. The decision to concentrate on a single manuscript, the redoubtable Ellesmere, is a sound one. Facsimiles of individual leaves from that manuscript have been scattered throughout the volume to give us a real sense of what it would have been like to open The Canterbury Tales for the first time in the years immediately following Chaucer's death." - Larry Scanlon, Rutgers Universit --Larry Scanlon, Rutgers University
From the Back Cover
The Broadview Canterbury Tales is a new edition of the complete tales in a text based on the famous Ellesmere Manuscript. Here one may read a Middle English text that is closer to what Chaucer's scribe, Adam Pinkurst, actually wrote than that in any other modern edition. Unlike most editions, which draw on a number of manuscripts to recapture Chaucer's original intention, this edition preserves the text as it was found in one influential manuscript. Spellings have not been standardized, the order of the lines and passages has not been altered, the text has only been emended when absolutely necessary for sense, and the original marginal glosses are noted throughout. The edition includes English glosses on the side of the page, and the introduction and notes address aspects of medieval culture, history, and language that may need explanation. A sampling of illustrations from the original manuscript is also included, along with a selection of other works that give the reader a rich sense of the cultural, political, and literary worlds in which Chaucer lived.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
94 of 95 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Worth its weight in gold,
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This review is from: The Canterbury Tales (original-spelling Middle English edition) (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)
I bought this Penguin Classics edition of Chaucer last year during a visit to Canterbury. I already owned the modernized edition edited by the late Nevill Coghill, but I figured: Hey, I'm in Canterbury--I have to buy a copy. So I bought this one.
For starters, this is the complete text of the Tales, and it is in the original Middle English. While the language may take a while to get used to (for beginners, especially) it's a blast to read. Another plus for this edition is the heavy, heavy glossing and a really extensive notes section which helped even an experienced reader of Chaucer like myself. If you're new to Chaucer, or even if you're not, this is the edition to have. It's a paperback, so it's portable, and it's complete. You won't be left wanting an odd tale or two with this book. Highly recommended.
59 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great inexpensive complete edition of Chaucer,
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This review is from: The Canterbury Tales (original-spelling Middle English edition) (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)
Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (Original-Spelling Edition). Edited by Jill Mann. Penguin Classics, 2005. ISBN 014042234X.
The Canterbury Tales itself needs no review, as Chaucer is universally acknowledged to be the greatest English poet after Shakespeare and Milton. As Chaucer's Prologue explains, the Tales are stories told by pilgrims en route to Canterbury. They range from tales of courtly love to bawdy farce to fable. Chaucer is a storyteller, and it might surprise some modern people just how entertaining a seven-hundred-year-old collection of stories might be. Unfortunately, the English language has changed since Chaucer's time, making it difficult for modern English readers to enjoy the Canterbury Tales without a bit of work. Chaucer wrote in a dialect of Middle English (ME) which is a direct ancestor of Present Day English (PDE). This relationship makes Chaucer much easier to read than other dialects of ME further removed from PDE, such as that in which the Gawain poet wrote. Chaucer's vocabulary, consisting mainly of words derived from French and Old English, is also easier than the Gawain poet's. With a little concentration, the modern reader will probably find many ME words that looked unintelligible are actually similar to PDE words. (This edition includes a note on "Chaucer's Language" which explains Middle English grammar well, but due to its use of grammatical terminology, it will be helpful only to those who already know what such things as pluperfect and genitive singular mean.) Getting used to Middle English will take time, but it's worth it. Now for this particular edition. I found it well edited, with glosses at the bottom of each page and detailed endnotes, which occupy about a third of the volume. Very rarely did I have a question that Mann did not address in one place or the other. There is a 140-page glossary which includes (I think) all words glossed. Archaic characters such as thorn are replaced with their modern equivalents; otherwise spelling is unchanged. My only complaint is its bulkiness: at 1254 pages, it's quite fat. Here's a sample of the Canterbury Tales as edited by Mann: Whilom, as olde stories tellen us, Ther was a duc that highte Theseus. 860 Of Atthenes he was lord and governour, And in his time swich a conqueror That gretter was ther noon under the sonne. Ful many a riche contree hadde he wonne, What with his wisdom and his chivalrye. 865 859 Whilom: once upon a time 860 highte: was called Here's my prose modernization:Long ago, as old stories tell us, there was a duke that was called Theseus. He was the lord and governor of Athens, and such a conqueror that there was none greater under the sun. He had won many a rich country with his wisdom and chivalry. Now Chaucer can be more complicated than this, but Mann's glosses almost always make him intelligible to the enterprising reader. Many words are very similar to their modern equivalents: "tellen" = "tell," "ther" = "there," "swich" = "such." The French influence is obvious in such words as "riche" and "duc." As you can see, glosses are identifiable by line numbers at the bottom of the page, but they are not set off in the text. Line numbers correspond, I believe, to the standard lineation of the Tales. At about twelve dollars on Amazon, this edition is a bargain. It's complete and cheap. I highly recommend it to those who want to read the actual words that Chaucer wrote.
31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A perfect edition,
By
This review is from: The Canterbury Tales (original-spelling Middle English edition) (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)
This is an unbelievably great edition of The Canterbury Tales. All I wanted was the original, complete version with definitions for archaic words. But the Penguin Classics edition was all I could find, so I got it. It comes with over 500 pages of extras!!! Super-detailed notes, a great glossary, and lots on Chaucer, his times, literary genres, etc., etc. Multiple interpretations are given for parts scholars don't agree on. I can't believe I paid $80 for the Riverside Chaucer in college! ...which I later sold back for much less. This edition blew me away, and it's relatively cheap.
If you haven't read Chaucer and want to read him in old English, it's tough at first, but it gets easier with practice. There are long tales, short tales, noble tales, bawdy tales, etc. If you just want to read a few, there are cheaper paperbacks with just a few. If you want the complete tales but not the essays and things, they exist, but they're more expensive than this edition!
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