The Canterbury Tales: Illustrated Prologue

I did an entire class on The Canterbury Tales one semester in college. I had read some tales before that in high school, but had not really delved deeply into any of them except "The Wyf of Bathe's Prologue and Tale".

I liked Chaucer from the beginning, probably because "The Wyf of Bathe" was a good place for me to start. The Wyf is engaging and charismatic, a real living, breathing character. I admired her courage, glibness and blustering manner. When you grow to like a fictional character like that, you know that the author has done a great job.

The Middle English might seem daunting to many, but reading Chaucer in modern English really takes away too much from the experience. Penguin Chaucer offers a nice in-between option -- modern English translations on one page, and Middle English on the other. The Riverside Chaucer, however, offers extensive footnoting. I would recommend reading this immediately if you are not too uncomfortable with jumping into Middle English without prior knowledge. It is not really that difficult since many words resemble modern English.

The beauty of the Canterbury Tales lies in its extensive coverage of almost every single topic under the sun, be it religion, courtly love, the female gender, brotherhood, mercantile dealings or the concept of "trouthe" (promise). More than that, the tales connect to each other, forming a single wonderful structure that is arguably the best representation of the period in which Chaucer lived, and more.

There are tales tailored to everyone's tastes -- raunchy fabliaux, courtly romances, fables, allegories, testaments to saints' lives. And every single one of them is not what they seem. There is a need for the reader to probe. The joy of reading Chaucer lies primarily in the discovery, the countless possible interpretations of a single word or line. The tales that most surprised me after many re-readings are "The Knight's Tale" and "The Nun's Priest's Tale". If your taste is for the odd and disturbing, you will like "The Clerk's Tale" and "The Prioress' Tale". "The Second Nun's Tale" and "The Man of Law's Tale" are among the most overtly religious of the collection, though all tales contain religious elements.

Never be too quick to dismiss a tale as uninteresting or unworthy of attention. There is always a precious nugget to be found.

The Tales are told during a pilgrimage, and so are Tales within a Tale. The politics that exist between the pilgrims is also significant, and a constant source of entertainment. The Wyf speaks sarcastically of the Friar in her Tale; the Host is violent in his dislike of the effeminate Pardoner; the Summoner and the Pardoner have a somewhat unusual relationship... What can Chaucer possibly hope to accomplish by staging this drama, this tale-telling contest (for contest it is)?

There is no doubt that The Canterbury Tales is a vision and each tale is an essential part of this vision. It is hard to draw an analogy for what I wish to say -- after all, The Canterbury Tales is not simply a drama, or a potential movie, or a static painting... it is multiples of those things.

And finally, there is a lyric beauty to Chaucer's poetry -- these tales are not told in prose form, but with rhymes and lilts. It is meant to be read aloud. It is story-telling at its finest.