Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: A Selection • ONLINE • Mountain Time

Poet Laureate John Dryden (1631–1700) said of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, “Here is God’s plenty.” We will explore just a small corner of that plenty as we read the General Prologue, the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, and the Wife of Bath’s Tale. We will read aloud together in a close-enough read, with plenty of discussion along the way. Most people will probably choose to read aloud in modern English, but if you know how to read Middle English, feel free!

The General Prologue, right from its famously brilliant first 18 lines, is a masterful introduction and frame for the tales that follow it. Like many of Chaucer's works, it is full of humor and irony. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale are startlingly subversive, challenging ideas prominent through the centuries about authority, the role of women, and true worth. Some other themes explored are appearance vs. reality, character, and how choice and agency function within the constraints of relationships and chance.

Shakespeare drew inspiration from Chaucer for plot elements of the Midsummer Night’s Dream, Troilus and Cressida, and the Two Noble Kinsmen; linguistic echoes and background/thematic influences can be found scattered throughout the works.

NOTE: Chaucer was very intentional in his word choices and meter. If you are reading from a book that contains only a modern English translation, having a Middle English text handy as well will make your experience of Chaucer much richer.

Resources for reading the Canterbury Tales:

ONLINE
Line-by-line translation at Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer website:
General Prologue
The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale

Side-by-side translation or Middle English only with glosses:
The Canterbury Tales (good content, but unfortunately the site is a bit of a mess)

BOOKS
Middle English: The Canterbury Tales. Edited and With Introduction and Notes by Jill Mann. Glosses at the bottom of the page. Also available as e-book.

Modern English: The Canterbury Tales. Translated by Burton Raffel. Also available as e-book and audiobook.

Middle English/Modern English:
The Canterbury Tales With Side-By-Side Modern English Translation. Translated by BookCaps. e-book.

The Canterbury Tales (Penguin Clothbound Classics). Contains the General Prologue and selected tales, including the Wife of Bath’s. Edited and Translated by Nevill Coghill.

Reference: A Chaucer Glossary by Norman Davis, Douglas Gray, Patricia Ingham, and Anne Wallace-Hadrill. Not at all necessary, since any ME edition will have a glossary, but available if you want it.

Sessions led by Ellen McFarland!