The Canterbury Tales

Posted on 22 November 2018 by Peter Ackroyd

A fresh, modern prose retelling captures the vigorous and bawdy spirit of Chaucer s classic Renowned critic, historian, and biographer Peter Ackroyd takes on what is arguably the greatest poem in the English language and presents the work in a prose vernacular that makes it accessible to modern readers while preserving the spirit of the original A mirror for medieval society, Chaucer s Canterbury Tales concerns a motley group of pilgrims who meet in a London inn on their way to Canterbury and agree to take part in a storytelling competition Ranging from comedy to tragedy, pious sermon to ribald farce, heroic adventure to passionate romance, the tales serve not only as a summation of the sensibility of the Middle Ages but as a representation of the drama of the human condition Ackroyd s contemporary prose emphasizes the humanity of these characters as well as explicitly rendering the naughty good humor of the writer whose comedy influenced Fielding and Dickens yet still masterfully evokes the euphonies and harmonies of Chaucer s verse This retelling is sure to delight modern readers and bring a new appreciation to those already familiar with the classic tales AprilFools Oh and the Wyfe of Bathe Talk about a woman who likes to be perced to the roote From Twitterature The World s Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less New Read [ The Canterbury Tales ] Author [ Peter Ackroyd ] For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr God bless you, Peter Ackroyd for making this book very easy to read It did not lose its original meaning He only used the words that are familiar to us Consider this example in the original 14th century English in London My konnyng is so wayk, O blisful Queene,For to declare thy grete worthynesseThat I ne may the weighte nat susteene But as a child of twelf month oold, or lesse,That kan unnethes any word expresse,Right so fare I, and therfored I yow preye,Gydeth my song that I shal of youw se God bless you, Peter Ackroyd for making this book very easy to read It did not lose its original meaning He only used the words that are f...Dear Duke Thesus,What is it with you and threatening women with death during your wedding Do you think it is romantic Dear Wife of Bath,You go girl Dear Chanticlear,Foxes like chickens in all the wrong ways Just saying.Dear Mr Ackroyd, World s Greatest Renassiance Man,I ve read Chaucer in the orignal both Tales and Trolius I ve tried to read various modern translations.Tried being the operative word.Yours, I finished It s wonderful.In part, this must due to the fact that you are a poet You Dear Duke Thesus,What is it with you and threatening women with death during your wedding Do you think it is romantic Dear Wife of Bath,You go girl Dear Chanticlear,Foxes like chickens in all the wrong ways Just saying.Dear Mr Ackroyd, World s Greatest Renassiance Man,I ve read Chaucer in the orignal both Tales and Trolius I ve tried to read various modern translations.Tried being the operative word.Yours, I finished It s wonderful.In part, this must due to the fact that you are a poet You keep the poetry of the tales, but since you write in prose, the forced rhymes of translation are non existent.But most o...Had my copy of The Canterbury Tales A Retelling had this cover instead of the elegant dark blue and white jacket from the Viking 2009 edition, I might have known what to expect and lowered my expectations accordingly.I do try to keep an open mind as a reader and I recognize that there is room for popularizations, but quite honestly I do not know what Peter Ackroyd was trying to accomplish here I will grant you that it reads quickly and easily and it has its amusing moments, so perhaps that mi Had my copy of The Canterbury Tales A Retelling had this cover instead of the elegant dark blue and white jacket from the Viking 2009 edition, I might have known what to expect and lowered my expectations accordingly.I do try to keep an open mind as a reader and I recognize that there is room for popularizations, but quite honestly I do not know what Peter Ackroyd was trying to accomplish here I will grant you that it reads quickly and easily and it has its amusing moments, so perhaps that might be enough ...This is a collection of the best stories ever told by Chauser He lived from 1343 till 1400 in Lundon England He was well versed in Latan, French, Italian and English This book is a translation by Peter Accroyd in modern English so as to make itaccessable to the modern reader The book describes a mottly crew of pilgrams on there way to Canterberry They threw in there lot together and decided to play a game Each one of them must regile the others with a story There were stories told o This is a collection of the best stories ever told by Chauser He lived from 1343 till 1400 in Lundon England He was well versed in Latan, French, Italian and English This book is a translation by Peter Accroyd in modern English so as to make itaccessable to the modern reader The book describes a mottly crew of pilgrams on there way to Canterberry They threw in there lot together and decided to play a game Each one of them must regile the others with a story There we...Ackroyd, Peter THE CANTERBURY TALES by Geoffrey Chaucer A Retelling 2009Many of us probably have bad memories of struggling with Middle English in school, trying to translate Chaucer and make sense out of it What made it worse was that our teachers always gave us versions that were edited to a G rating, down...Since I didn t have to learn French to read Madame Bovary or Russian to read War and Peace I ve always wondered why academics think we should only read the Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English with its archaic words and cryptic spelling Most of us have slogged through a page or two of that and given up Enter Peter Ackroyd with a wonderful prose translation into contemporary English of Chaucer s most famous work I ve always wanted to know why this book so famous it sounds so ve Since I didn t have to learn French to read Madame Bovary or Russian to read War and Peace I ve always wondered why academics think we should only read the Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English with its archaic words and cryptic spelling Most of us have slogged through a page or two of that and given up Enter Peter Ackroyd with a wonderful prose translation into contemporary English of Chaucer s most famous work I ve always wanted to know why this book so famous it sounds so very old fashioned and out of date What I found was a book that was written 600 years ago with large parts that seem as if they were written yesterday The Wife of Bat...of the translations I used as a reference point, i enjoyed this one the most despite how intensely liberal it is not a translations but a retelling , as its the only one i ve seen that holds up on an aesthetic basis thoug...Plot The Canterbury tales follows a very mixed group of people as they go on a pilgrimage Each has their own individual stories which they tell as the story progresses Occasionally being interrupted by annoyed others I didn t really know what to expect with the stories but they were all very individual and set to the time period I thought they were very interesting but I found them quite hard to get into Characters One character who famously stood out was the wife of Bath Her was of stor Plot The Canterbury tales follows a very mixed group of people as they go on a pilgrimage Each has their own individual stories which they tell as the story progresses Occasionally being interrupted by annoyed others I didn t really...I set out to read this because I like this author and thought his re telling in prose might be a good way to approach Chaucer I read the clerk s tale, part of the intro, the knight s tale only because it was first , the wife of Bath...Review to follow.

English
22 November 2018

Peter Ackroyd