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The Canterbury Tales: (original-spelling edition) (Penguin Classics)
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Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: Geoffrey Chaucer
Publisher: Penguin Classics
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Our Price: $12.24
You Save: $ 5.76 ( 32% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: Geoffrey Chaucer
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Average Customer Rating:
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The Canterbury Tales: (original-spelling edition) (Penguin Classics) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 821.1
EAN: 9780140422344
ISBN: 014042234X
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 1328
Publication Date: 2005-08-30
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
Dewey Decimal Number: 821.1
EAN: 9780140422344
ISBN: 014042234X
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 1328
Publication Date: 2005-08-30
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
Editorial Review of The Canterbury Tales: (original-spelling edition) (Penguin Classics)
One of the greatest and most ambitious works in English literature, The Canterbury Tales depicts a storytelling competition between pilgrims drawn from all ranks of society.
The tales are as various as the pilgrims themselves, encompassing comedy, pathos, tragedy, and cynicism. The Miller and the Reeve express their mutual antagonism in a pair of comic stories combining sex and trickery; in "The Shipman's Tale," a wife sells her favors to a monk. Others draw on courtly romance and fantasy: the Knight tells of rivals competing for the love of the same woman, and the Squire describes a princess who can speak to birds. In these twenty-four tales, Chaucer displays a dazzling range of literary styles and conjures up a wonderfully vivid picture of medieval life.
Customer Reviews of The Canterbury Tales: (original-spelling edition) (Penguin Classics)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: More than I bargained for
Review: Familiarity with Chaucer was the next logical step after being introduced to the period by Anya Seton's praiseworthy historical novel, "Katherine," since Kathryn Swynford was sister to Chaucer's wife, Philippa. But before buying "The Canterbury Tales," I read several biographies of Chaucer, including GG. Coulton's and Marchette Chute's (q.v.). And then it was dive in...
Well, this edition must be the bargain of the century - over 1200 pages for $12 or so. I took the disciplined approach and read through the glossary, and as a German-speaker and a Danish/Norwegian to English translator, I found a LOT of words that had wended their way into Middle English. Still, familiarity with the glossary was a necessity. Then I read all the notes...and I ended up knowing far more about how a cultivated man of 1400 looked back on Greek mythology, and Christian theology as it developed over the centuries. I was amazed at how much Greek mythology influenced even educated thinkers.
And then to the tales themselves. Although I could easily read a fair amount, I was still dependent on the helpful glosses at the bottom of the pages. BUT...after the first two or three shorter tales, I wasn't enjoying Chaucer! Amid all the charm of fables, blood and gore and bawdiness, I wasn't finding anything that touched me, or suggested who and what Chaucer was. And so, I left the book at a book cafe--only to return the next day and retrieve it, with the conviction that there had to be something more substantial than mere wit, intellect, and genius.
And I finally found it, in this passage from the Knight's Tale, (p. 110)
where Theseus sums up the tale:
"The Firste Moever of the cause above,
Whan he first made the faire cheine of love,
Greet was th'effect and heigh was his entente.
Wel wiste he why, and what therof he mente.... [2990]
...."Than may men by this ordre wel discerne
That thilke Moever stable is and eterne.
Wel may men knowe, but it be a fool,
That every part diriveth from his hool;
For nature hath nat take his beginning
Of no partie or cantle of a thing,
But of a thing that parfit is and stable..."
In my translation:
The Firt Mover of the cause above,
When he first made the fair chain of love,
Great was the effect and high was his intent.
Well knew he why, and what thereof he meant....
....Then may men by this order well discern
That such a Mover stable is and eternal.
Well may men know, though he be a fool
That every part derives from His whole;
For nature has not taken its beginning
From a part or portion of a thing,
But from a thing that perfect is and stable...
I intentionally stop with this view of the Divine, before Theseus describes things falling apart in the human realm.
I find it interesting that Lady Julian of Norwich (see her "Revelations of Divine Love") and Chaucer were contemporaries. And, of course, Wycliffe and the Lollards. It makes me wonder just how much non-traditional religious thinking was going on and where Chaucer actually fit into this theological picture.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Pilgrimage Tales
Review: As a reader of Middle English tales in the original spelling and structure, I found this edition to be a good publication. It makes for good adventure and humor and suspense. I enjoy reading Chaucer in front of my fireplace on snowy winter nights.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A perfect edition
Review: 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!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Chaucer Was a Sly Fox
Review: Chacuer's Tales have lived on because they address the human condition with keen insight, humor and honesty. Walking to Canterbury by Jerry Ellis is a highly recommended read for those who want to follow the author on a fun walking adventure along the route of the Canterbury Tales. It is easy reading and filled with heart, humor and amazing little known facts about the Middle Ages.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Great inexpensive complete edition of Chaucer
Review: 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.
Review Summary: More than I bargained for
Review: Familiarity with Chaucer was the next logical step after being introduced to the period by Anya Seton's praiseworthy historical novel, "Katherine," since Kathryn Swynford was sister to Chaucer's wife, Philippa. But before buying "The Canterbury Tales," I read several biographies of Chaucer, including GG. Coulton's and Marchette Chute's (q.v.). And then it was dive in...
Well, this edition must be the bargain of the century - over 1200 pages for $12 or so. I took the disciplined approach and read through the glossary, and as a German-speaker and a Danish/Norwegian to English translator, I found a LOT of words that had wended their way into Middle English. Still, familiarity with the glossary was a necessity. Then I read all the notes...and I ended up knowing far more about how a cultivated man of 1400 looked back on Greek mythology, and Christian theology as it developed over the centuries. I was amazed at how much Greek mythology influenced even educated thinkers.
And then to the tales themselves. Although I could easily read a fair amount, I was still dependent on the helpful glosses at the bottom of the pages. BUT...after the first two or three shorter tales, I wasn't enjoying Chaucer! Amid all the charm of fables, blood and gore and bawdiness, I wasn't finding anything that touched me, or suggested who and what Chaucer was. And so, I left the book at a book cafe--only to return the next day and retrieve it, with the conviction that there had to be something more substantial than mere wit, intellect, and genius.
And I finally found it, in this passage from the Knight's Tale, (p. 110)
where Theseus sums up the tale:
"The Firste Moever of the cause above,
Whan he first made the faire cheine of love,
Greet was th'effect and heigh was his entente.
Wel wiste he why, and what therof he mente.... [2990]
...."Than may men by this ordre wel discerne
That thilke Moever stable is and eterne.
Wel may men knowe, but it be a fool,
That every part diriveth from his hool;
For nature hath nat take his beginning
Of no partie or cantle of a thing,
But of a thing that parfit is and stable..."
In my translation:
The Firt Mover of the cause above,
When he first made the fair chain of love,
Great was the effect and high was his intent.
Well knew he why, and what thereof he meant....
....Then may men by this order well discern
That such a Mover stable is and eternal.
Well may men know, though he be a fool
That every part derives from His whole;
For nature has not taken its beginning
From a part or portion of a thing,
But from a thing that perfect is and stable...
I intentionally stop with this view of the Divine, before Theseus describes things falling apart in the human realm.
I find it interesting that Lady Julian of Norwich (see her "Revelations of Divine Love") and Chaucer were contemporaries. And, of course, Wycliffe and the Lollards. It makes me wonder just how much non-traditional religious thinking was going on and where Chaucer actually fit into this theological picture.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Pilgrimage Tales
Review: As a reader of Middle English tales in the original spelling and structure, I found this edition to be a good publication. It makes for good adventure and humor and suspense. I enjoy reading Chaucer in front of my fireplace on snowy winter nights.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A perfect edition
Review: 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!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Chaucer Was a Sly Fox
Review: Chacuer's Tales have lived on because they address the human condition with keen insight, humor and honesty. Walking to Canterbury by Jerry Ellis is a highly recommended read for those who want to follow the author on a fun walking adventure along the route of the Canterbury Tales. It is easy reading and filled with heart, humor and amazing little known facts about the Middle Ages.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Great inexpensive complete edition of Chaucer
Review: 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.