Canterbury Tales

Continuing in my review of the 24 books I have planned to read in 2009, the second category I planned to read from was Medieval Literature. For this category, I read Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales".

First off, I would like to say that I eschewed reading them in their original Middle English, as in 2008 I took a graduate class where there was far too much reading in Middle English.

Chaucer seems to be almost universally lauded as a genius. It seems to me, though, that almost every particular type of critic and reader likes to imagine Chaucer as someone who is exactly like themselves. Secular humanists like to see him as a proto-humanist, with his religious tales being mainly satirical. The religious crowd likes to imagine Chaucer as being devout, although most would be happy to somehow bury the anti-semitism of the Prioress' tale. I prefer to leave Chaucer's slippery personality in the Canterbury Tales to be uninterpreted. It's more a mess of the diversity of points of view and experiences in human life, a mass of stories. It is a text easy to read from a post-modern perspective.

I must say that I much prefer "Troilus and Criseyde" or many other medieval romances to the individual Canterbury Tales, but that's just me. The potty humour is not generally enough to leave me entertained, nor do I have a great desire to use Chaucer to press my critical agenda (see above). Some tales have some good entertainment value (see the Knight's Tale or the Wife of Bath's Tale). Some, such as the disturbing Prioress' Tale, in which a kabal of Jews slaughters a young Christian boy, are interpretatively knotty, and can sustain lengthy analysis. Some are just downright boring. There. I said it.

The form itself is interesting, although the versification can make extended reading quite tiring. The very framed narrative structure, with the quarrelling, worldly characters taking turns telling their tales along the way to Canterbury is the most truly noteworthy and ingenious part of Chaucer's work, though. If you wish to get a taste for this work without reading the entirety of it, as I did, may I suggest you read the General Introduction and the Wife of Bath's Tale?