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Classical comedy at its best.
Date of Review: Jul 16, 2000
I can't speak for everyone here, if I could I'd be in the circus, but the first time I heard the words "Canterbury Tales" I just knew I was going to hate it. Poetry? Come on teach, can't you just poke my eyes out with a stick or something? Written in Thirteen Hundred and what? Great not only is it poetry it's poetry older than my parents?
That of course was my attitude before reading the Canterbury Tales. Now I'm one of those English major geeks that laughs out loud just thinking about the Miller's Tale. In fact I'm laughing now and everyone in the computer lab is staring at me.
This is one of the best books ever to be assigned to me in high school and we were only assigned the pretty stories. The only thing I didn't understand was my instructor's odd fascination with us memorizing the first few lines of the General Prologue. I have since learned that is a fascination that all teachers share and whose strength can only be rivaled by the urge to keep students from reading the dirty stories Chaucer lays out. As a result I didn't meet the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner until I discovered that reading outside of school can be fun. Now I have a major that has doomed me to teaching. Damn the fates!
I guess the first recommendation I would make it to find a Modern English translation of the work. Penguin Classics puts out a very good translation by Nevill Coghill. If you don't find a modern translation you will be forced to read the original middle English. The perverted jokes almost seem more perverted this way, but the rest is a wee difficult to understand without some practice.
The one theme that might be derived from Chaucer's poems is that love and marriage just might be mutually exclusive items. The Miller's Tale is of a carpenter whose wife is shagging the local astrologer while allowing a church clerk to kiss her bum. The funniest line of all the poems comes from poor Absolon when he realizes it was not her face he kissed.
"Something was amiss; He knew quite well a woman has no beard, yet something rough and hairy had appeared." I'll just leave those lines to stew in your imagination while I again laugh aloud, drawing the attention of all those around me.
The Wife of Bath is a woman who has married four older men to get their money. Not that she is old she marries a young man to give her pleasure. When he exhibits a mind of his own, she beats him into submission. Chaucer was all about women's liberation.
The Miller of the Reeve's Tale has a wife and a fine daughter he plans to marry off to a fine family. The only mistake he makes is too get too drunk on the night that two of his employees are sleeping in the house. Through a bit of trickery both mother and daughter find themselves with company in their beds.
Most of the Canterbury Tales take a twisted look at love and marriage in some way or another. Another favorite target of Chaucer's is the clergy. The best subject for this idea is the Pardoner. The Pardoner makes no qualms about what he does. He sells forgiveness to the people. If you've done something wrong, the Pardoner can make it right with God. He also has a very nice collection of medicines. By stirring a sheep's bone in the town well, the Pardoner can make an elixir that will cure just about any thing that ails man or livestock. The Pardoner of course is nothing more than a crook who is only out to get money.
The Tales go on too far for me to give a synopsis of each one, but suffice it to say they are most definitely worth a reading. Chaucer displays a razor sharp wit that most comedians of today would give their joy buzzer for. The raunchy aspect of a good deal of the Tales only adds to the comedy of Chaucer's work. The writing is also surprising easy to read considering it was written more than 600 years ago. Just be sure to get that modern translation.
Also take care to read every tale and every prologue. There is something entertaining to be taken from each and every one of Chaucer's tales. To skip one means potentially missing out on something really good.
