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    The Canterbury Tales
    The Canterbury Tales
    The Canterbury Tales
    Audiobook (abridged)3 hours

    The Canterbury Tales

    Written by Geoffrey Chaucer

    Narrated by Philip Madoc, Edward de Souza, Anthony Donovan and

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    About this audiobook

    Chaucer’s greatest work, written towards the end of the fourteenth century, paints a brilliant picture of medieval life, society, and values. The stories range from the romantic, courtly idealism of The Knight’s Tale to the joyous bawdy of the Miller’s; all are told with a freshness and vigour in this modern verse translation that make them a delight to hear.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNaxos Audiobooks
    Release dateApr 3, 1995
    ISBN9789629546465
    Author

    Geoffrey Chaucer

    Often referred to as the father of English poetry, Geoffrey Chaucer was a fourteenth-century philosopher, alchemist, astrologer, bureaucrat, diplomat, and author of many significant poems. Chaucer’s writing was influential in English literary tradition, as it introduced new rhyming schemes and helped develop the vernacular tradition—the use of everyday English—rather than the literary French and Latin, which were common in written works of the time. Chaucer’s best-known—and most imitated—works include The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, The Book of the Duchess, and The House of Fame.

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    Reviews for The Canterbury Tales

    4/5

    98 ratings55 reviews

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    • 2/5
      In honour of my late medieval studies adviser, Dr John Bugge, I figured it was time to finish reading one of his favourite books. I read it. It's a collection of stories. I am honestly still not sure what the appeal is. *And I'm a medievalist.* But I read it and now I don't feel like I have to read it again. It can go onto my bookshelves so I can feel intelligent and well read.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Mark Twain said something like: "Classics are books you think you ought to read, but never do." Well, I am glad I put in the hours to listen to this book, but I cannot say I enjoyed much of it. Partially, it was the narration--some of the accents used were simply impossible--and partially it was boredom that set in when discussing theology that is so far from my own. Still, it is part of the "canon" and as such, it is good to be a bit more literate today than I was yesterday....

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I read The Prologue, The Cook's Prologue & Tale, The Prioress's Prologue & Tale, Words of the Host to the Monk, The Monk's Tale, The Nun's Priest's Tale, the Pardoner's Prologue & Tale, The Wife of Bath's Prologue & Tale

      I enjoyed reading it, but its not a book I'd just pick up and read for fun.
    • 5/5
      This is a very approachable translation of The Canterbury Tales. Many of my students still struggle with reading Chaucer in translation (at least with the translation in our anthology); however, this translation seems more approachable for my college students.
    • 4/5
      Touted as unabridged. It contains unabridged versions of the 12 more popular tales.
    • 4/5
      The narrator of this audiobook bumped this book from a 3.5 to a 4 star rating. David Cutler had an excellent grasp of the Old English and helped the poetry flow smoothly. I was able to enjoy the bawdy humor and misogynistic views of womanly virtues". It is always interesting to read what was considered important in our past and Chaucer definitely wrote as a man of the times. He did occasionally get a few knocks in for the women, though. It was fun re-reading these tales now that I don't have to analyze them for a term paper."
    • 5/5
      Loved the variety of stories available. It had something for everyone. It is now my travel book. As I can pick and choose what I feel like reading.
    • 5/5
      Always entertaining. I loved reading this the first time and I always enjoy going back over a tale or two for a chuckle.
    • 3/5
      Wow! Almost readable in original English after 660 years. Irreverent & ebullient.Read Samoa Nov 2003
    • 3/5
      Canterbury Tales were ruined for me in school. If I'd read them out of school I would have loved them. Some of the stories are superb while some of them fall flat. If you don't mind shifting between the enthralling and mundane this book wouldn't be half-bad.
    • 4/5
      Canterbury Tales is basically required literature for every literate English speaker out there. It offers a plethora of different stories to choose from: some sad, some funny, some downright raucous and crude. You'll never run out of stories for all your varieties of moods.I would recommend trying reading this in the original Middle English; it's difficult but rewarding, especialy when you revert back to modern English afterwards and realize how easy and familiar it is!That being said, Burton Raffel's new translation of Canterbury Tales is approachable and friendly to readers of all ages, from the slightly-but-hopefully-not-too-apathetic high school student to the serious and wise scholar of English lit. More points for having a lovely book layout; I love the feel of a good, solid book in my hands.
    • 3/5
      While these are quite tiresome to translate into modern english, or something understandable at least, the stories themselves are quite interesting.
    • 4/5
      I could listen to and read this repeatedly and still find more to love I think.
    • 3/5
      Normally I would give CT a four-star rating, but the particular edition I'm writing about is not written in the original Middle English; it's been "translated" and modified with a mind for the flow of verse rather than the original meanings of the words. Since I find so much of Chaucer's humor washed out by editors' tampering, I give this edition a measly three stars.
    • 5/5
      As an English major, I'm pretty much require to enjoy this (while analyzing the hell out of it).
    • 5/5
      I read this in high school for AP English. Don't let the old english throw you, this book is awesome. It's full of hilarious stories and are certainly worth a read. Medieval people definately have fantastic senses of humor.
    • 2/5
      It haunted me in my high school English class, and I guess I just couldn't get the sour taste out of my mouth. I do respect the scope of this novel, and the ambitious points of view expressed by each character's story. This just wasn't my cup of tea.
    • 5/5
      A classic work of literature and one of the first tot criticise society in this way. A wrote a paper about it for my studies and knowing more about the time it was written makes you appreciate it even more.
    • 4/5
      This particular translation proved to be an easier read than I had expected. A little of the flow feels like it has been sacrificed in favor of readability, but that didn't bother me- rather, I enjoyed the chance to read the stories without having to over-think the poetry. I always have my older editions for the times when the beauty of the language is more important to me than the stories!
    • 4/5
      This is a wonderful book. It took me some time to get into the book, because I am not that used anymore to this style of writing. However, when you get into the meat of the book, you will be amazed at the amazing variety of styles in the book. There are a multitude of characters. The stories cover a wide range, from the raunchy to the spiritual, to the boring. The style in which each story is told matches the story teller, and matches the story. It is astounding to come across such range in one book. Apart from the sheer brilliance of the writing, I think the book does give us a glimpse into the England of the times. This book is a must read
    • 5/5
      Oh, the treasure of finding and holding a shopworn copy of Chaucer's tales in my hands is just too much for words. His tales are not just downright funny, but they can be applied even today to the people we work with, live with, and play with on a daily basis. In fact, I kept laughing every time I read another tale that was a ringer for someone I knew. The classics hold up well, don't they?


      Book Season = Sping ("when the sweet showers of April fall and shoot")
    • 3/5
      easy to read, easy to understand. i took a whole class on it and all of its various themes were extrapolated and studied.. i don't think much of it pertains to anybody after the middle ages. lots of bawdy humor.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed reading this. When I finally got past reading the last word of each line (distracted by the rhyming verse), I really enjoyed reading The Canterbury Tales, which was a surprise to me, because I normally hate anything that teachers assign us to read. The tales were realistic, easy-to-understand, and above all, kind of funny. Totally shocked me. 4/5
    • 4/5
      One of the few books I was forced to read in high school that I actually enjoyed. If you can get past the antiquated language, the crude and bawdy tales are a great reflection of what the common folk were like; full of greed, lust, pride and the rest of the deadly sins.What makes this books exceptionally ironic is how little has changed in human nature.
    • 3/5
      I've recently read several interesting short story collections from antiquity, namely The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. Each of them has inspired enough academic articles to fill a library, so I'm not going to delve into their historical import or the ways each has influenced future literature, but I think its valuable to consider how they compare to each other in approach and how I saw them as stories.

      First, The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer's unfinished collection provides a great window into what life was like in the middle ages, more specifically England in the 1300s. By providing a diverse cast of story tellers as the vehicles for the stories themselves Chaucer is able to explore many professions and various points on the social hierarchy, satirizing and criticizing all the flaws he saw in his society. To an extent these are interesting, but social satire does not always age well. While it certainly gives you a sense of how England looked through Chaucer's eyes (a den of corruption and hypocrisy for the most part, especially when discussing the religious institutions), it can be hit or miss as to whether the critique has aged well. Critique on chivalry in The Knight's Tale? I'm in. Critique of alchemists wherein pages and pages of ingredients are listed? Yawn. Additionally, the majority of the tales aren't that deep, with many being raunchy stories of pure entertainment and others being morality tales with blatantly obvious messages (pride is bad and fortune is fickle, we get it). The message of one tale was flat out stated to be "beware of treachery." Was there someone at the time going around saying "treachery isn't that bad, don't worry about it?"

      In reverse chronological order the next up is Arabian Nights. This collection is amorphous enough that many tales pop up in one edition and not another, which in my opinion weakens the arguments I see about the collection having a set of coherent themes or messages. The sole theme that I found to be consistent was the power of storytelling- it appears in the frame narrative, of course, but also the stories themselves often showcase the ability of stories to trick the powerful, and oftentimes stories lead to sub-stories and so on, like nesting dolls. Toward the end of the collection the descriptions began to get to me: if I never see someone described as being "as beautiful as the moon" with "lips like coral" and other features like various gems I'll be a happy reader. The Norton Critical addition showed its worth by providing many additional pieces inspired by the Arabian Nights, as well as critical analyses of the text (some of which I found less than convincing, but always interesting). More so than the other two collections Arabian Nights just struck me as a bunch of stories, many of which of course were intended to edify, but mostly its purpose was to entertain. It more or less accomplished this.

      The earliest, and also the best, of the three collections was Ovid's Metamorphoses. Chaucer references the classic explicitly several times in his work, and it's no wonder: Ovid is the master that Chaucer tried and failed to match. What put this collection above the others for me was that Ovid not only had a consistent theme to the stories (transformations, as the title would suggest), but also stories flow from one to the next, mostly with an organic feeling that makes the work take on a grander scale. Ovid's not just telling stories, he's tracing the history of the world, explaining how the world became populated with the birds and plants and animals that fill it, and connecting the past all up to what was then the present day. It also serves as the source for much of what we know of Greek/Roman mythology, as Ovid was also setting down an account of the actions and behavior of the gods. Framing narratives can be used to great effect, just look at If On a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino for a phenomenal example, but Canterbury Tales creates such a framing narrative only to leave it incomplete, and Arabian Nights slowly siphons away the importance of the frame narrative until it is forgotten entirely. In comparison, Ovid's Metamorphoses connection of his tales makes his work stand on a grander scale, and makes it feel like a more coherent whole. A note on translations, I found Charles Martin's work to be very strong in general, although he makes a few bizarre choices. Translating a singing contest into a rap battle was a clear mistake. Overall, though, I feel confident recommending him so long as you want a more modern take on the text.

      All three collections have stood the test of time, and each is an essential read to understand the ages and cultures they arose out of. Between the three of them, though, Ovid's Metamorphoses is the most worthy of your time in my opinion.
    • 5/5
      I've found, like many before me, that Chaucer has many delightful little works within a work here. I thank him for popularizing English as a written art form, as I did not complete my training in Latin. You will be using such foul and blasphemous language as "By God's Blood and Bones" for many weeks upon completing this book. My favorite tale is the Miller's; that naughty Allison and her nether eye....
    • 4/5
      Fun reads but a bit eclectic in a chaotic sense.
    • 3/5
      I've just come to the conclusion that I don't have enough life left for me to be spending it wading through Chaucer in the original English version. Obviously it has paid dividends for many English Lit PhD's but for me it's hard work with little to show for the effort at the end......"Oh!...so that's what 'Wyde' means!" Well great! But I have many more books to read and not enough time left to read them. So...sorry Chaucer. I'm sending you off to the charity auction. If I'm going to read Chaucer, I think it had better be in a modernised version...it's too much like trying to read a foreign language in the original. (Though, having said that, it is interesting just how much I can understand from the original text. just wonder if it was read phonetically by a current resident of Midland England whether it would sound all that different to the current dialect). I give it 3 stars...not because it's a mediocre book but because it's not the book for me at the moment.
    • 5/5
      Chaucer presents a group of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas à Becket's at Canterbury Cathedral. To make the journey interesting they settle upon the plan that each of them should tell a tale for the amusement of the others. Eventually a vote would decide who had told the best story. By this structure, Chaucer is able to tell several otherwise unrelated stories. This could be considered the first major piece of literature in English.
    • 5/5
      This beautiful old volume was sadly printed in the worst of times. Even though I've been careful in its storage, and in handling, the dreaded acidity is catching up with the paper. I imagine that in perhaps another 50 years, the pages will be completely yellowed and crumbly, and it'll be gone. This volume is written in the original English (the East Midland dialect, according to Untermeyer's excellent introduction) of the day, with an excellent glossary at the end (but beginning, I suspect, to be less than helpful, nearly 100 years after publication).His stories give insight into the day to day lives of people in his time (the 1300s), and he wrote in a manner that is still lively and readable today.