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A review by cocoonofbooks
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
2.0
It's hard to believe that this book was shorter than it was intended to be, because it's so, so long. I mean, it's only 600 pages, but so many of the stories just drag, especially — worst of all — the very first and very last ones. Certainly, some of the stories are funny and memorable, but then there are long treatises on religion that were a bear to get through. What's perhaps most interesting to me is what a large percentage of this book is devoted to gender relations, marriage, and sex, and the wide variety of opinions the stories cover, with different characters making different arguments for women's submission or independence. It's hard to know what Chaucer ultimately wanted his reader to come away from this work thinking.
I read a translated edition of this book (translated by Burton Raffel), and there are clearly pros and cons to reading a translation vs. Middle English. I felt that the translator was a little too heavy-handed in his replacement of words and names, and despite his lengthy explanation in the front about keeping rhythms and using stress markers and whatnot, he seemed to abandon all attempts to make the lines rhyme. I'm not sure if there's a translation out there that balances comprehension with poetry, but this wasn't it. I feel like it might be better to just get an audio recording of the original Middle English, except that you couldn't easily stop to look things up.
Despite genuinely liking parts of this book, I found much of it boring and hard to get through. I can see how this book would be rich for study and interpretation; you could easily write pages on the role of religion or gender or taboo topics in this work. It's nice to have the background of having read this classic, but it's not one I would recommend as a wholly enjoyable read.
I read a translated edition of this book (translated by Burton Raffel), and there are clearly pros and cons to reading a translation vs. Middle English. I felt that the translator was a little too heavy-handed in his replacement of words and names, and despite his lengthy explanation in the front about keeping rhythms and using stress markers and whatnot, he seemed to abandon all attempts to make the lines rhyme. I'm not sure if there's a translation out there that balances comprehension with poetry, but this wasn't it. I feel like it might be better to just get an audio recording of the original Middle English, except that you couldn't easily stop to look things up.
Despite genuinely liking parts of this book, I found much of it boring and hard to get through. I can see how this book would be rich for study and interpretation; you could easily write pages on the role of religion or gender or taboo topics in this work. It's nice to have the background of having read this classic, but it's not one I would recommend as a wholly enjoyable read.