The Canterbury Tales (Oxford World's Classics)

The canterbury Tales, translated by David Wright.This is the best translation yet of the famous medieval work. I own the Coghill translation (Penguin), as well as the Norton Edition which is glossed and annotated. And the Oxford by Wright, an older version that is exactly the one reviewed here: same number of pages, same introduction, different cover artwork. To the issue at hand: Chaucer's poetry in the Canterbury Tales was direct, earthy, and sensual whenever his characters were thus, so it really betrays the poetry and the poet to translate his work as some sort of tea party where all the participants, including the Miller and the Wife of Bath, were prone to use euphemisms when the conversation got raunchy. But the Middle Ages were far raunchier than many of us think, and Chaucer was a man of his times, only more so. That is why I like this translation by Wright. His modern version flows quite naturally and the characters use words that do fit their personalities. However, the much-praised, but mediocre translation by Coghill does this with the Wife of Bath (Penguin, page 267): Be sure, old dotard, if you call the bluff, You'll get your evening rations right enough.This is euphemism pure and simple, and euphemism of the bad kind, because in the original Chaucer NEVER mentions "evening rations." This "evening rations" nonsense is a term that Coghill put there because he could not bring himself to write the exact, modern term for the original "queynte." (And, no, contrary to some opinions, queynte does not mean "pretty little thing" or belle chose.) I don't blame him, since it would have been probably censored --I'm pretty sure Amazon would censor that word if I were to write it here. But it grates me that so many people have praised Coghill's version of the Tales as "the best" in modern English. No, it isn't. It's barely OK but it's not the best. The best is Wright's rendition. Let's see the original (Norton Critical Edition, page 113, lines 331-2): For certeyn, olde dotard, by youre leve, Ye shul have queynte right y-nough at eve.We can clearly appreciate how Coghill has rewritten Chaucer's verse and the Wife's expressions until they correspond with somebody's idea of propriety (Coghill's), but certainly not Chaucer's or his sex-loving Wife of Bath's. Coghill kept the word "dotard," but decided not to keep the modern "queynte." He even goes so far as to invent "if you call the bluff" and "right enough" in order to force a rhyme. What does Wright do? Wright remains far closer to the original, as we expect a good translator to do (Oxford, page 227): Don't worry, you old dotard--it's all right, You'll have cvnt enough and plenty, every night.I have misspelled the key word in order to filter through the censorship, but I hope you get the meaning. Wright also adds certain words and rearranges the lines so that they rhyme, as Coghill did. However, Wright is closer to Chaucer and to the speaker, the Wife of Bath, than Coghill ever was. There are no "evening rations" here. There is a woman who tells her husband that he'll get plenty of sex from her every night. Wright allows us to hear the Wife, and the Miller, and the other characters as Chaucer wanted them to be heard. His pilgrims came from all walks of life, with different experiences and different ways of expressing their hopes, sorrows, happiness and desires. This translation into modern English by Wright doesn't betray the poet by changing his characters' expressions for empty polite talk and euphemisms (although, admittedly, Chaucer made the Wife use some euphemisms, he also made her direct in several occasions; this is one of them). Wright has brought Chaucer and his wonderful Tales closer to us, and he deserves to be praised.

First, a random comment for those who think that the Middle Ages were stupid, backward, and stinky: read Chaucer and enter an entire fascinating world made memorable by one of our finest writers.Rather than the review the whole sprawling book, I am going to limit myself to what might seem unpromising material: The Prioress's Tale.We meet this dame in the General Prologue, and if you read superficially, you may just classify her as a "good woman of religion," but if you read a bit more carefully, and have some knowledge of human nature, you are like to shudder a little. In particular, Chaucer's description of her table manners -- never spills a single drop, completely elegant, never stains her immaculate blouse -- is so uncannily precise that I remember seeing a similar woman dining in Bangkok, Thailand: the most "elegant" table manners imaginable, well-slathered in makeup, and wearing a completely artificial smile which was returned by her female companions at lunch that day. At the time, it was one of the strangest spectacles I had ever seen, this sort of affected, upwardly-striving, totally fake elegance: and in fact, it made me shudder and clear out of the place as soon as I could. These women were ALL affected hypocrites, and all ACCEPTING one another's show of affected elegance, and it made my hair stand on end a bit --- "a nest of vipers" came to my mind.The Prioress is cut from the same cloth, an affected lady who actually aspires to the aristocracy, not to any religious accomplishments. She has little pet dogs whom she spoils, feeding them food more suitable for human infants (there might be a reference to Matthew 15:26 there), and, fatally, wears a bracelet reading "Amor Vincit Omnia" ("Love Conquers All") --- which might be carelessly taken for a Christian motto but is nothing of the kind.And then she launches into her "tale," which is a short, horrific, and pointless tale of an "innocent Christian boy" who is foully murdered by the foul Jews for practicing his Christian hymns as he went to school through their neighborhood. Oh, those Jews: they slit his throat and threw him in the privy. Later, some Divine Agency brought him back to life, and killed all those nasty, nasty Jews.Behind the affected elegance of the Prioress lurks a person who really knows how to hate.So, Chaucer surely knew how to create a devastating portrait of religious decadence and hypocrisy, in a few short pages. How many modern writers can do that?The book as a whole could not be more highly recommended!

(Please note that I've given this book 5 stars because Amazon forces a star rating for reviews, and David Wright's translation itself deserves no fewer than 5 stars.)Warning, would-be Kindle readers of the David Wright translation (Oxford World Classics): after the translator's introduction, the majority of the text in this book is stored as images, scanned from the print version! This causes several problems:* The Kindle's dictionary can't be used.* Text-to-speech can't be used.* Text can't be annotated.* Alternative text sizes can't be selected.* Text size varies wildly as larger images are resized to fit my Kindle's 6" screen.* Some of the image resizing renders text too small to be read comfortably on my Kindle's 6" screen.* The book is a whopping 4.2 Mb for a mere 412 pages! That's more than ten times the size it would be if the text were stored properly in the Kindle's text format.* The obscene file size, and constantly having to render images, are a drain on Kindle's battery.It's disappointing and baffling that OUP chose not to produce a proper Kindle version of this excellent translation.

Thank you...

I literally loved that book! I received it very quickly and it was in good conditions! This must be on everyone's reading list!

This may indeed be a great translation, but if you are using a kindle, you will likely never find out. The pages appear to be copied images of the book. This means that every pages formatting and text size can be slightly different. In many cases the text is simply too small to read. So you end up zooming the image in/out everytime you change a page. This should have been dealt with by the publisher.

Good condition