The Canterbury Tales [Blackstone] cover art

The Canterbury Tales [Blackstone]

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The Canterbury Tales [Blackstone]

By: Geoffrey Chaucer
Narrated by: Martin Jarvis, Jay Carnes, Ray Porter, John Lee, Malcolm Hillgartner, Ralph Cosham, Simon Vance
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About this listen

 At the Tabard Inn, 30 travelers of widely varying classes and occupations are gathering to make the annual pilgrimage to Becket's shrine at Canterbury. It is agreed that each traveler will tell four tales to help pass the time and that the host of the inn will judge the tales and reward the best storyteller with a free supper upon their return.

Thus we hear, translated into modern English, 20-some tales, told in the voices of knight and merchant, wife and miller, squire and nun, and many more. Some are bawdy, some spiritual, some romantic, some mysterious, some chivalrous. Between the stories, the travelers converse, joke, and argue, revealing much about their individual outlooks on life, as well as what life was like in late 14th-century England.

©2003 Gavin Menzies (P)2008 Blackstone Audio Classics
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Wonderful recitation, great storytelling reflecting the medieval genre - one of the better Middle English to modern English translations I have had the pleasure of reading.

Excellent reading

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So apparently Mediaeval people were really obsessed with adultery and cuckoldry. And drunkenness. I didn't like this for the same reason I don't like Shakespeare--it's too low, too vulgar, too coarse, too common (in every sense). It's so petty, so inconsequential. I'm not interested in how ordinary people lived their lives (when there isn't something greater at stake)--my soul longs for grandeur, adventure, heroism, the high and noble and great. Tolkien was absolutely right (and Martin is wrong) to purge the gross from his pseudo-historical epics.

My favourite was the Prioress's Tale, and least favourite was the Miller's, for obvious reasons. I noticed that in the audio version I listened to the narratress of the Prioress's Tale adopted a hysterical tone in order to distance herself from the teller and discredit the tale.

I think it was a mistake to listen to this via audibook, as I was often totally unsure what was going on or even which tale I was hearing. At times I wanted to check a word or phrase, but this was difficult as the audiobook I was listening to via audible doesn't have proper part headings/divisions. On the other hand, if I hadn't listened to the audiobook, I would never have got through it. And I did want to get through it, just because it's one of those things one ought to have read, and I'm a completionist.

Based purely on my personal enjoyment: 2 stars, minus 1 for all the farting. Seriously, what the fuck, Chaucer? It wasn't even funny.

I'll stick with Beowulf

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