Customer Reviews

The Canterbury Tales: Nine Tales and the General Prologue (Norton Critical Editions)

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This edition is designed for those coming to the Middle English for the first time. All the difficulties are glossed, usually on the same line in italics. Far more glossing than any other edition. The spelling has also been regularized so that the same word is spelt the same each time. There are other aids as well: past participles are set as y-clept not yclept, and there are footnotes for particularly difficult lines.

Why read Chaucer? Well, in the first place for the beauty and masculine vigor of his English, an English one soon catches on to after a bit of practice. Why else? Well, because Chaucer was intensely human and his stories are interesting, and are either truly poignant or richly comic and sometimes even both. Also for the rich gallery of unforgettable human types his stories bring before us.

Of course, Chaucer isn't for everyone. Those with no feeling for his language and no sense of humor, and whose own humanity is not their strongest point, may lack what is needed to appreciate Chaucer at his true worth.

And in the presence of critical editions such as the present one, there is a danger of forgetting that so much of Chaucer's power is in the sheer music of his lines. Those new to Chaucer would be well advised to learn how to read Middle English _aloud_ as soon as possible by listening to one of the many excellent recordings. If they were to do this they'd soon find their pleasure in Chaucer magnified enormously.

Rather than read selections from the Canterbury Tales in a modern English translation, the beginning reader of medieval literature would do much better to read this attractive and well glossed edition of the original. The carefully chosen background materials also , esp. the primary texts, usefully orient the reader in Chaucer's contemporary literary and ideological tradtions. Chaucer is a magnificent poet; he is a master storyteller, funny, humble, complex. Chaucer gives Shakespeare a run for his money.

Excellent background materials. The price is right for most college students. The vast chronological distance between ourselves and Chaucer demands that we learn more of his world than we do of contemporary writers and the selections of Boccaccio go a long way toward facilitating this. Much more has to be asked of students than to merely put Chaucer into one's own words. We need to ask why Chaucer would want to put these words to paper. And this edition can get that process of historical investigation going.

While this is a wonder of words, a piece completely in poetry form, this is perhaps the worst book I have ever read. Unless you are a lit major or have a lot of free time on your hands and can sit through pointless speeches consisting of endless pointless description, buy anything else.