The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Part of BBC’s “100 Stories that shaped the World” list, I thought it would be fun to keep track of all the works I have read that are listed.
I must have read The Canterbury Tales in the summer of 2009 for a course during my undergraduate program. Sadly, I can’t remember which course had it on its reading list, but I remember sitting in one of the smaller libraries on campus reading the tales and thought I noticed something odd. It turned out that for each page of the original tales, written in Old English the publisher of the particular edition I was reading included the translated version on the opposite page. Therefore, I was reading the same page twice, first in Old English and then in modern English. It took me about one full tale to catch on to it and thought the story progressing sort of slowly, but it helped me understand a bit better what was going on in the story.
I can’t remember any specific details about the tales 9 years later, but they have left an impression and created a higher standard for short stories that has stayed with me since then. Each story had its own unique voice and atmosphere, and I thought them to be highly entertaining and richly created.
Overall, I would highly recommend reading the tales in Old English, if that tickles one’s fancy or in modern English, both will not disappoint.
