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A review by sarah2696
The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling by Geoffrey Chaucer, Peter Ackroyd
5.0
Ackroyd has done a marvelous job converting Chaucer into modern English. At times it doesn't quite work (like in one tale he says a scrap of paper was "flushed down the loo", despite the setting still being very much medieval even if the language isn't) but this is rare and overall he's made Chaucer a million times more accessible to a lay audience.
I've never read any Chaucer before and didn't know what to expect. All I knew was that I couldn't dream of calling myself a medievalist if I hadn't read this at least, and Ackroyd was the perfect introduction. This isn't for serious scholars of middle English literature, but it serves as an ideal starting point for anyone new to the world of Chaucer. I can normally read middle English somewhat easily, but I know for sure that it's still too much work for me to enjoy reading it for a long period of time. Ackroyd took all that away and enabled me to just enjoy the tales - and I was surprised at how much I did enjoy them! Naturally some tales are misogynistic and racist and anti-semitic, but I don't think it would be fair to use that as a criticism - it's just a reflection of the very misogynistic, very anti-semitic society that Chaucer and his contemporaries inhabited. I was surprised, though, to find some (like the Clerk's tale) telling wives to be strong and not meek, as it was completely the opposite of what I had expected to find.
Now that I've read this, I may look into getting a version of the Tales in the original spelling - but I'm immensely glad that I had them in modern English for my first time reading them.
I've never read any Chaucer before and didn't know what to expect. All I knew was that I couldn't dream of calling myself a medievalist if I hadn't read this at least, and Ackroyd was the perfect introduction. This isn't for serious scholars of middle English literature, but it serves as an ideal starting point for anyone new to the world of Chaucer. I can normally read middle English somewhat easily, but I know for sure that it's still too much work for me to enjoy reading it for a long period of time. Ackroyd took all that away and enabled me to just enjoy the tales - and I was surprised at how much I did enjoy them! Naturally some tales are misogynistic and racist and anti-semitic, but I don't think it would be fair to use that as a criticism - it's just a reflection of the very misogynistic, very anti-semitic society that Chaucer and his contemporaries inhabited. I was surprised, though, to find some (like the Clerk's tale) telling wives to be strong and not meek, as it was completely the opposite of what I had expected to find.
Now that I've read this, I may look into getting a version of the Tales in the original spelling - but I'm immensely glad that I had them in modern English for my first time reading them.