Customer Reviews

The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling

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When I first heard about this, I was a bit skeptical, not to mention feeling a bit of an intellectual snob remembering the hours we spent learning, decoding, memorizing, and translating the original Tales back in school. But I couldn't resist taking a peep under the cover and was immediately seduced. Ackroyd's language perfectly captures the tone of each tale, and the characters leap from the pages as their stories unfold. I expect it is now only a matter of time before it's adapted for the screen; we can only hope HBO or Showtime get a hold of it first and spare us squirming through Keanu Reeves as the Pardoner or Carmen Electra as the Wife of Bath. In any case, give this book a chance, and stuff it in the stocking of anyone who claims to love literature. Just don't expect to see them until they've turned the last page.

I studied "The Canterbury Tales" for several weeks in college many years ago, and from time to time re-read it -- or tales from it -- with the old pleasure and without the pressure of earning a grade that would keep my scholarship alive. The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale has always been a great favorite -- she seems to epitomize some of the powerful farm women I knew as a child.

This new translation comes at a time when I've been regularly reading aloud to my wife, and we have greatly enjoyed this version -- my Middle English accent is incomprehensible, even to me. My well annotated college Modern Library version of the original and the Coghill translation are always close at hand to deepen our understanding; the Ackroyd version is very easy to read aloud and to understand in modern terms.

Which version you prefer will depend on your own interest and objectives in reading this classic of English literature. These short extracts from the Wife of Bath's Prologue give a flavor of each of my favorite versions:

Chaucer:

"Housbondes at chirche-dore she hadde fyve,

Withouten other companye in youthe ...

In felawschip wel coude she laughe and carpe.

Of remedyes of love she knew perchaunce,

For she coude of that art the olde daunce."

Coghill:

"Five husbands have I had at the church door,
Yes it's a fact I've had so many.
All worthy in their way, as good as any. ...
The gift of laughter and fun was mine.
Love's remedies I know, and not by chance;
I know first hand the art of that old dance.

Ackroyd:

"She had been married in church five times but, in her youth, she had enjoyed any number of liaisons. ... She had performed in that game before. She knew, as they say, the ways of the dance."

The "Times" [of London] discusses why reading this great book has relevance today:

"Chaucer may be said to stand at the head, or source, of the great English tradition. G.K. Chesterton once wrote that he considered it extraordinary "that Chaucer should have been so unmistakably English almost before the existence of England". But it is perhaps not so extraordinary of a poet who seems to define or sum up the English genius, with his personal modesty and broadness of feeling, with his respect for tradition and his inventive diversity. Translating The Canterbury Tales into contemporary English is another way of affirming its centrality and its continuing life. It can be reborn in every generation."

All three versions have their charms, and Chaucer still lives for those that love the English language and good literature.

Robert C. Ross 2010

While the Tales don't usually translate well, this is about as good as any could be. Avoiding the painfully flat literalism of most adaptations, Akroyd gives, instead, a real sense of the flavor and tone of the original Middle English.

I'm sorry to rain on the parade of positive reviews here, but this "translation" of the "Canterbury Tales" strays too far from the original to be characterized truly as a translation (Ackroyd himself calls it a "retelling").

Chaucer is a suggestive poet, ambiguous, ironic; he can be crude at times, but he is always cleverly reversing himself and hiding his intentions from the reader. That (and the amazing poetry) is what makes him such a complex and delicious poet to read. Ackroyd's prose, larded with the f-word and other expletives, just doesn't capture the sense or the spirit of the original.

Examples could be multiplied endlessly, so let me pick just two. In the infamous pear-tree scene in Merchant's Tale, a randy squire copulates in a tree with May, the young wife of January, the old blind owner of the manor. January's sight returns at the crucial moment and he witnesses his own cuckolding, which both he and the narrator have some trouble describing, until the gullible old fool lapses into a paroxysm of euphemism ("I thought your smock had lain upon his breast") as he apologizes to his deceitful wife. At one point January does blurt out "He swyved thee!" (which is as close as Middle English comes to the f-word). Ackroyd uses this scene though as a pretext for exploding the f-bomb three times in less than a page, thereby missing most of the comedy that comes from shifting registers and the poet's struggle to be explicit and delicate at the same time. Ackroyd also completely misses the hints in this same scene that May is pretending to be pregnant in order to get January to let her climb into the tree so she can satisfy her food-craving (J longs for an heir). Thus, the reader completely misses the significance of January's stroking her belly at the end, since she may by now be with child by another man.

Let me finish with an example that all Chaucer lovers will recognize -- those famous opening lines (loosely paraphrased): "When April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root and bathed the sinews of every plant in the liquid whose force engenders the flower; when the Zephyr wih his sweet breath has inspired the tender crops in every wood and heath...." Nature is the point here; man comes in later. But not in Ackroyd! He translates, "When the soft sweet showers of April reach the roots of all things, refreshing the parched earth, nourishing every sapling and every seedling, then humankind rises up in joy and expectation."

If Chaucer had wanted humankind in these opening lines, he would have put humankind there. He didn't. Instead, he is building up an expectation for a certain kind of poetry, teasing us, testing us. Of course, we expect men to appear in this spring setting, but Chaucer is staving off the moment when nature gives way to man, just as later at the end of this verse paragraph, he reverses direction again and surprises us with, of all things, pilgrimage as the natural outlet for the impulses of spring ("Thanne longen folk to goon on [wait, wait, wait] pilgrimages")! Of course we know that pilgrimages can be excuses for boondoggles, but that's an implication that emerges from the shift in tone in Chaucer and all the more tantalizing for being left unstated. Not so with Ackroyd, who mentions general tourism before he even gets to pilgrimage: "This is the best season of the year for travellers. That is why good folk then long to go on pilgrimage." He thus loses all that delicious play and reversal of expectation. Boo!

This unsubtle version is unworthy of the deft and evasive poet it follows. It may be fun to read (and maybe even a bad Chaucer is better than no Chaucer at all). But don't mistake it for the real thing.

I am completely enamored of this retelling! Mr. Ackroyd does a wonderful job of updating the language into modern prose while remaining incredibly faithful to the words of the poetry. Bear in mind that when Chaucer is crude, Mr. Ackroyd follows suit wholeheartedly (you will definitely figure that out about a third of the way through "The Miller's Tale"). Those who are reluctant to read this classic will find it to be the longed-for approach. Those who are already fans will have a wonderful time rereading the Tales in this new form.

I was surprised to find a new prose translation of The Canterbury Tales. I've been unimpressed by others. Did we really need another? Apparently so, for Peter Ackroyd's retelling of Chaucer's masterwork presents the tone and finesse of the original but in paragraph form. As an American high school English teacher and a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to classics, I have always extolled the virtues of reading poetic narratives in poetic translations, if not in the original language; yet, I found myself enjoying every line, happily surprised as to the faithfulness shown the first text.