Customer Reviews

The Canterbury Tales (original-spelling Middle English edition) (Penguin Classics)

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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.

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.

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!

I bought the Kindle version of this book because it was cheap and it received a lot of rave reviews. Unfortunately the Kindle version is only useful for somebody who is proficient in middle English. I haven't seen the paper edition, but the book states that difficult words are translated as footnotes on the same page they appear. No doubt this is makes for a great reading experience as you can enjoy Chaucer's original text and use the footnotes on the same page to pick up what you can't understand. Sadly this doesn't work on a Kindle as you have to continually page back and forth between the translations (maybe 5 or 6 times per page).

One of the great English classics, an illustrated edition "The Canterbury Tales" has been re-released by Broadview Press in the original Middle English to be read and interpreted on its own and not processed for contemporary readers through translators. For easier understanding for some readers, Robert Boenig and Andrew Taylor have provided annotations on Chaucer's archaic English language for more complete comprehension. An enduringly popular satire of his own time, contemporary readers will find for themselves why "The Canterbury Tales" is an authentic literary classic. A superbly printed and presented edition, "The Canterbury Tales" is especially recommended for academic library reference collections.

There is no getting around the fact that I am one of those individuals who struggled with this work and struggled with Middle English. I was first introduced, to some degree, to this early ancestor of our language in high school. I am sorry to report that most of it went well over my head, for the most part due to laziness on my part. Later in college I received strong doses of Middle English, and strong doses of this particular work. Being older helped; there was greater understanding on my part, but still, I felt I was missing much. Yes, I did the work and produced the grades as all must do if they want to graduate, but still, I just did not get it. I am also one of those people who has been blessed or cursed, depending on how you look at it, with an acute literary curiosity and can be at times, rather tenacious when I go after something. I dearly wanted to have some understanding (at least more than I had) of this particular work. Enter this book!

I have never been and never will be, nor do I have a desire to be an expert in Middle English. That being said though, and in lieu of my statement above, I have always been drawn to this particular work and have searched through many different translations and editions of Chaucer's writing to find just the right one, the one I could connect with. I found it in this chunky edition.

As has been stated, it does take some work; but that is okay as this edition is well footnoted, has a wonderful glossary of explanatory notes and gives the full tale, which makes the reading much less intimidating for someone like me. When I feel the need, this is the volume I turn to. Now I have found that if I hear something and then read it, I get far more out of the work. I have approached this work with a three pronged attack. I first read several translations in Modern English and I then ordered from the library a set of books on tapes and actually listened to the reading of the Modern English Translation. I then took this work being reviewed here, read it, and again, ordered a CD from the library which was read in Middle English. Taking it a story at a time, reading, listening and then reading again, it all fell in place for me.

Now I know that there is probably many a professor out there; indeed many a graduate student who have spent life times in the study of this work and others of its ilk that are probably scoffing at my feeble and rather time consuming attempts here. I know, it is sort of pathetic at some level. That is okay though. This method worked for me, I am able to enjoy this work now and as it is for my personal satisfaction rather than gaining the ability to actually teach the subject to others, I am quite satisfied with my little endeavor. Will I ever be an expert? No, I hardly think so, but that has never really been my goal. Hey, will I ever be a wine tasting expert? No, but I do enjoy a glass of good wine now and then and can appreciate the good from the bad; that satisfies my personal needs as to wine, much as this read has helped satisfy my personal needs as to the writings of Chaucer. Now for those of you who are purest; I can fully understand where you are coming from. I feel much the same about fly fishing, birding and certain aspects art. While I would never under any circumstances use worms to catch a trout, I can certainly understand why some would and I have no ill will toward them.

This translation and edition was extremely helpful. I received a great amount of joy from using it and can only give it high marks due to that.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

This is the best edition of the Canterbury Tales on the market, by far. Here are the main reasons why:

1. It's complete; many other editions (such as the Norton) only include a "selection" of tales. But if you know the Canterbury Tales you know that almost all of them are good (or at least interesting) and you miss some great tales when you don't get them all. I've found that even the allegedly "bad" tales are still really good, not to mention that the tales work together in various ways (arguing, dialoguing, etc.) so you need to read them all to get the whole experience.
2. It's readable; the size of type, font, and the overall layout make for a very comfortable reading experience. The Riverside Chaucer, for example, besides being an expensive monstrosity, also has really small type in double-column format (this can be discouraging, in my opinion; it takes a lot of reading before you get to turn the page). Plus, the footnotes are on the bottom of each page so you can get help if you need it, but not have it distract you if you don't.
3. It's cheap; enough said.
4. It has endnotes; this edition has copious endnotes that are very up-to-date, in-depth, and have numerous references to the vast history of Chaucer criticism for further study. Jill Mann, the editor, is a very well-respected Chaucerian and she does an excellent job of making the endnotes readable and valuable so they are useful to both Chaucer beginners and experts.
5. It's in Middle English; don't be daunted by Chaucer's Middle English. It's surprisingly easy to read once you get the hang of it and it's infinitely more beautiful and elegant than a modern translation. It easily provides the same kind of reading pleasures as Spenser, Shakespeare, or Milton, and is not any more difficult than them. With this edition, because of the convenience of the notes and easy-read typeface, you'll find it that much more easy to pick up the Middle English than with any other edition.

I'm highly impressed with this book; I think it makes a really good (and cheap!) alternative to the Riverside, which has come to be the standard classroom edition of the CT. This isn't an edition for the casual reader of Chaucer, but it's not overly academic either. The supplementary materials are aptly chosen and really helpful, especially for those who might be interested in attempting a historicist reading. Nicely written and contextualized introductions for each.

The Kindle Penguin edition of THE CANTERBURY TALES in the original Middle English cannot be beaten at the price. Every non-modern word is defined in a note, sometimes at the rate of three definitions a line.

Download a sample to see how the lines look. They're quite readable on the Kindle though often they have to be bent in two because of their length. You'll have to trust me that the definitions are good: they are, but you can't get to them on the sample.

But for 95 cents, hey. Complete, and with a good introduction. The notes are well-linked and easy to get to once you have the complete etext.

A quarter of the book is language notes, word definitions. Another quarter is historical and social notes. These are keyed into the language notes, but you'll have to get to them by using a bookmark in the notes. They're quite thorough and helpful.

I'd have bought this edition at ten times the price, like a shot. Fanatical Kindle user that I am, I think the printed text would be slightly easier to handle, but you'd need two bookmarks there, so maybe not.

This edition is good for anyone looking to read the Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English. The notes are very details and helpful and the glosses at the bottom of the pages are helpful too. Some of the glosses are a little obvious, but that it to be expected.

Over all this is a good edition if you are interested in reading a very popular work in it's original language.