The Canterbury Tales (Penguin Classics)

Coghill - a friend of Lewis - provides a very fresh and loyal translation (a verse translation) to Chaucer. Nothing of course is better than the real thing, but I suggest this always as a happy second.

In order to understand English litterature and the English language, many have read, or at least tried to read, Chaucers "Canterbury Tales". I too did begin (and sort of finished) the work in Middle English, which is not as hard as one might be lead to think, but is quite labourious and painstakingly slow at times. With this version, a great compromise has been found, translating it as true to the original as possible yet in modern English. I know that every time you make a rewrite or translation, things are lost, but sometimes it is necessary, or just quite convenient. This is one of those times.

It is great fun reading the Canterbury Tales. The structure of the work makes it very accesible and easy to pick up after some time away. You could treat it as a whole entity or as a collection of short stories centered around a group of persons on a pilgrimage. One of the books that any decent home library shouldn't be without.

great buy got here in about one week definitely worth the wait. Great book for a great price

I suppose that any freshman college student has read some of these Tales. I had a professor who read a few of them to us in the Olde English. It was really fun and you really got a grasp of where the English language was coming from - and poetry.
I went on from my English class and read the whole works. They are good, classic short stories. You are really going back to the basics here. The stories are all easy to read and are about the everyday type people and their everyday lives. You get classic English literature, history, short story writing techniques, and the roots of the English language all in one medium sized book. Can't beat it. It's a bargain.

I find it very unfortunate that I wasted my money on this book when I could have read the entire story on the Internet. Of course, the story is out of copyright, and you'll find it all over the Internet, in complete.

Don't waste your money like I did. Even worse, I never even read the book.

My rating is only on the size of the book, because like I said, I never read it, and I am forced to issue a rating (I only wanted to enter a comment).