I prefer the Middle English probably out of a masochistic streak - The Miller's and Wife of Bath's Tales are particularly superb, as they always have been. You can never replace a line like 'and soddenly anon, Damyan gan pullen up hir smock and in he throng'...

If you like Chaucer and the notion of merieval writers being relevant to today, you should also check out Boccaccio's Decameron, which has some beautifully-told stories that pre-date those of Chaucer.

This translation allows you to read the stories, which often are in poetry, with pleasure. I found the stories to be earthy, funny, but sometimes sad.

Disclaimer: This refers to the print version of the product in original middle English, with occasional margin translations. There seems to have been a product crossover between this and a modern English tape.

Having read the Canterbury Tales I think Shakespeare, the "canonical" classic English writer, does not compare to Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales are so extensive, whimsical and vibrant that I they should overturn Shakespeare as the celebrated English texts.

Chaucer presents us with an entire universe - the England of his time. Over a dozen people from all walks of life tell their tales, women and men, rich and poor, criminal and saintly. Reading the Tales is like reading a textbook on medieval England, but one that's come to life and had been soaked with the warmth of Chaucer. He mocks any and all aspects of society and is not above toilet humour - but for me this hardly detracted from the work, instead making it more real and unelitist. In fact it is largely due to Chaucer and his unelitist use of the vernacular English that the movement of using the language of the people for literature started.

Of course there are difficulties. The work is in Middle English. But please please please don't read a "translation" into Modern English! The original is so musical, so understandable that the extra effort in decoding does not compare to how it appears. I'd imagine a translation to be very flat unless the translator was almost divinely inspired. Chaucer's language is not that difficult, just read aloud and phonetically and follow the rhythm and rhyme of the verse. This will make most words easy to understand.

Some tales (esp. the 2 prose tales) have been considered boring by many readers. Still, get an edition like this that includes them all. In Chaucer's overview of England, you won't find everything interesting. You won't laugh at all the jokes, some of the humour will be lost on us all through the 6+ centuries separating us and him. Sometimes he will be overbearing, pompous, dogmatic. But as a whole, the work still does an amazing job at describing medieval life: in terms of satire, language, poetry and meaning.

...combines reviews. One person reviews the CD version of the book, while another reviews a modern interpretation of the middle english. I am here to review the book at hand, which is "Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer, published by Everyman's library.

First off, the book is complete, and rendered in middle English, so it is not for the faint of heart. Notes are given in the margins, although these generally seem useless (if you read the book aloud, you will understand most of the phrases they "translate", even though your eyes won't believe what your mouth just spoke). Of far greater value are the footnotes to many of the lines, which render in a modern sense some of the more obscure greetings, curses, idioms, etc. the reader is likely to find. Unfortunately, looking down at the footnotes will break your rhythm, and it can be difficult to find your place again, with so many unfamiliar words staring at you. I wish the editors(presenters?) would have put THESE footnotes in the margins, instead of the simpler fare found there (however, I understand that some people may not read the book as easily as I did).

The work itself seems complete, however, although I am no scholar of Chaucer. Even the Parson's Tale is found here (it is deleted in many works, since it is little more than a maudlin sermon), although I would skip it if I were you. The poetry is incredibly pleasing to the ear, if offensive to the eye; I cannot stress enough that one should read the book aloud to hear its greatness.

I won't review the work, since I feel I have no right to criticise Chaucer. However, the presentation here is good, with the exception of the footnote problem. While this edition is not for the faint of heart (it takes real work to read), I would recommend it to anyone who wants to actually hear the words Chaucer heard in his own head as he wrote this.

This set of CDs is a fraud! Nowhere does it say in the ads that it is not Chaucer that is being read but a "translation" by some hack poet. So, if you are only interested in the stories but have no sensitivity to the sound and rhythm of the second best poet in the English language, then this is the stuff for you. But it is definitely not Chaucer.