The Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer

Description

Bawdy, pious, erudite, absurd, tragic, comic: here in Dryden’s words is ‘God’s plenty’.

With their astonishing diversity of tone and subject matter, The Canterbury Tales have become one of the touchstones of medieval literature. The tales are told by a motley crowd of pilgrims they journey for five days as from Southwark to Canterbury. Drawn from all levels of society and all walks of life (from knight to nun, miller to monk), the pilgrims reveal a picture of English life in the fourteenth century that is as robust as it is representative.

Rendered here with consummate skill and sensitivity into modern English verse by Nevill Coghill, The Canterbury Tales (which Geoffrey Chaucer began in 1386 and never completed) retain all their vigour, their humour and indeed their poetry.