Product Overview
The Canterbury Tales is among the earliest of the great narrative poems written in the English language. Its author, Geoffrey Chaucer (c.13401400), penned his masterpiece in a vernacular that was the standard dialect in the southeast of England during his lifetimea language of rich vitality, but also very different from the English we speak today. This useful volume, updated with an enlightening new introduction by Andrew Galloway, presents readers with the vigor, liveliness, and humor of Chaucers original Middle English poetry, interspersed line-by-line with Professor Vincent Hoppers modern, graceful, and easy-to-understand translation. This new edition also features four more of Chaucer's narratives, newly translated by Professor Galloway. The Canterbury Tales is a set of stories that a diverse group of travelers tell to one another at the end of each day. They had set off by foot on a religious pilgrimage from the Tabard Inn in London to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in Englands cathedral town of Canterbury. This volume opens with Chaucers own famous Prologue, and then presents the best among those many tales, which demonstrate Chaucers skill in portraying a wide range of very different personalities. For instance, we meet the religiously pious but haughty Prioress, the comically bawdy Miller, and the genially earthy Wife of Bath, among many others. Through it all, we are treated to Chaucers own voice, which is worldly wise, often ironic, sometimes self-deprecating, and always good-natured. Here in a newly updated edition is an attractive and approachable textbook for students of English literature. Its also a richly entertaining volume for the enlightened general reader This new edition gives todays readers an awareness as never before that The Canterbury Tales is one of the great masterpieces of world literature.
