Should i read the canterbury tales

Krissy Kneen, poet, novelist and memoirist. Audio Player failed to load. Play Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Image: Supplied. Download Why you should read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and meet his feistiest character Cassie is away this week, but will be back next time. Duration: 53min 57sec Broadcast: Fri 20 Aug , pm. Oxford Professor Marion Turner , who has written the first full-length biography of Chaucer in a generation, tells us about the extraordinary man who wrote them and why we should all read the Canterbury Tales.

Interview by Stephanie Kelley. What would someone learn from your biography about Chaucer that they might not have known before? But really, that image came about after his death. In his lifetime, no one thought of him in that way. He had an extraordinary life. That life involved, for instance, being a prisoner of war in France; it involved traveling multiple times to Italy; it involved going to Spain.

He was multilingual, and he lived in all kinds of different environments. Chaucer was a great internationalist and a cosmopolitan poet. In my biography, I was interested in trying to think about the complete Chaucer, in thinking right across his life: thinking about what happened to him when he was a teenager working in his first jobs in the great household, what happened to him when he was a parent.

When he was born, he was living in Vintry Ward in London on the river. You could look into the city or out to the Thames, which was the place where all the ships came in, bringing products from all over the world. At this time, you could buy spices in London that had come from an island in Indonesia, for instance. His father was a wine merchant. So, right from his early childhood, he was in a very international world.

And the poetry that he wrote was international, too. His sources were mainly not English, but in many other languages. He was outward-facing, and he was involved in all kinds of broad international European, and also global, cultural currents.

How does Chaucer get here? What changes take place in society throughout his writing career? The really seismic, major event is that the plague hits in the s. When Chaucer is about six or seven years old, the plague comes to England and completely changes European and Asian society.

The toll that it took on society was unprecedented. Perhaps a third of the population died, from all different levels. Essentially, for the people who survived, things got better—not psychologically, but financially.

Especially for the poor, because the same amount of land still needed to be worked on, but there were many fewer people to do the jobs. So, they could demand higher wages. There was more literal movement and more social mobility. Many laws were passed to try to freeze wages at pre-plague levels, or to try to stop people who were born at a certain level in society from wearing smarter clothes sumptuary laws.

Major social changes happen across the fourteenth century. There were changes in architecture, as people got more money; then, in the cities, people started to add to their houses and build more private rooms. People began to live in slightly different ways. Chaucer was born in the early s—about or —and he died in He was born in the reign of Edward III. He then lived through the whole of the reign of Richard II, and died shortly after Henry IV had usurped the throne and become king.

During this time, the Hundred Years War— the war with France which was on and off across the latter part of the 14th century and into the 15th century, which Chaucer fought in—was going on.

Many of his jobs involved mercantile work. His main job was as a customs officer for the wool trade in the city of London, for example. There was also a big growth in bureaucracy—a big growth in the production of texts—in the 13th century. Now, in the 14th century, increasingly, there was more writing in English. And Chaucer was one of the poets that started writing major poems in English. There had been people writing in English before, but now there was a flood of poets writing in English: around the same time as Chaucer, there was also Langland, writing Piers Plowman ; Gower writing Confessio Amantis ; the anonymous Gawain-poet writing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl , to name two of his poems.

We also get our first named female authors writing in English around this time: Julian of Norwich, and then into the fifteenth century, Margery Kempe. The kinds of poems Chaucer writes had never been written before in English. In terms of setting the scene for the production of the Canterbury Tales , in literary terms, the earliest poem Chaucer wrote that we know about is called The Book of the Duchess.

That poem was very much in a French style, and for a courtly audience. That audience would only have been used to hearing those kinds of poems in French. No one had written that kind of poem before in English. Chaucer then wrote a series of other poems—and prose, and translations. Most authors across time are thought of as mainly writing one kind of text—drama, or poetry, or short stories, for instance.

We might think of someone like Hardy, who wrote novels and poems, but usually we think of someone as associated with one genre. He just did so much. And he was very experimental in what he did. As we think in retrospect about how he became the poet of the Canterbury Tales , we can see him experimenting, trying to find the best mode, the way he wanted to express himself. In literary terms, we see him trying paths he decided not to go down: for instance, the path of the court poet, where he writes verse that seems to be more about the poet-patron relationship.

Instead, he decides to write a poem that we might think of as more proto-democratic in many ways. He really finds his mature voice in the Canterbury Tales. So, the Canterbury Tales. We have a group of people who meet at an inn, or a pub. The scene is set precisely for variety: for lots of people to be able to tell different kinds of stories. The idea of the tale collection—a group of stories—is a brilliant genre, because it allows you to do many different things.

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But then, after that, Harry Bailly the innkeeper wants to keep on a hierarchical order of tale-telling. And he tells a brilliant tale. After that, we never return to the principle of hierarchy. The tales take on an organic form where one follows another. All kinds of different things happen. I think one thing people underestimate about Chaucer is just how funny he is.

Some of the tales are deliberately extremely comic; some are very ribald in all kinds of ways. Others are very serious. In different centuries, people have liked different ones the best. In the 20th century, the ones that people liked best were the ones that were outrageously funny and often very rude. These kinds of outrageous stories were the ones people liked best in the 20th century. And each individual tale can be interpreted in so many ways—he really opens up possibilities of multiple interpretations.

Even when he seems to give you a clear moral, that moral is never effective or convincing. The interlinear translations offered by Harvard contain a line-by-line translation below the original Middle English. This Nicholas anon leet fle a fart As greet as it had been a thonder-dent, That with the strook he was almoost yblent; And he was redy with his iren hoot, And Nicholas amydde the ers he smoot ….

The tale is an example of the fabliau or comic skit, and concerns a lecherous young student at the University of Oxford, Nicholas, and his adulterous relationship with Alison, the young wife of an old carpenter. Flood warnings, farting, and frantic ark-building all ensue, in one of the great jewels in the comic crown of medieval literature.

We have analysed this tale here. A yeerd she hadde, enclosed al aboute With stikkes, and a drye dych withoute, In which she hadde a cok, hight Chauntecleer. In al the land, of crowyng nas his peer. His voys was murier than the murie orgon On messe-dayes that in the chirche gon ….

To ransake in the taas of bodyes dede, Hem for to strepe of harneys and of wede, The pilours diden bisynesse and cure After the bataille and disconfiture. And so bifel that in the taas they founde, Thurgh-girt with many a grevous blody wounde, Two yonge knyghtes liggynge by and by, Bothe in oon armes, wroght ful richely, Of whiche two Arcita highte that oon, And that oother knyght highte Palamon.

Nat fully quyke, ne fully dede they were, But by hir cote-armures and by hir gere The heraudes knewe hem best in special As they that weren of the blood roial Of Thebes, and of sustren two yborn …. A story of rivalry between two Athenians, Palamon and Arcite and love, its pure, straight-faced nature prompts the Miller to tell his tale of bawdy high-jinks that follows.

And with that word she saugh wher Damyan Sat in the bussh, and coughen she bigan, And with hir fynger signes made she That Damyan sholde clymbe upon a tree That charged was with fruyt, and up he wente.

For verraily he knew al hire entente, And every signe that she koude make, Wel bet than Januarie, hir owene make, For in a lettre she hadde toold hym al Of this matere, how he werchen shal. And thus I lete hym sitte upon the pyrie, And Januarie and May romynge myrie ….

But then in fairness, the husband is called January. At Trumpyngtoun, nat fer fro Cantebrigge, Ther gooth a brook, and over that a brigge, Upon the whiche brook ther stant a melle; And this is verray sooth that I yow telle: A millere was ther dwellynge many a day. As any pecok he was proud and gay …. In an attempt to get his own back on the Miller, the Reeve tells this comic tale about a Miller who is duped by a couple of men. Lo, heere the wise kyng, daun Salomon; I trowe he hadde wyves mo than oon.

As wolde God it leveful were unto me To be refresshed half so ofte as he!