Canterbury Tales

 I think it was sometime last spring when I started Canterbury Tales, because that was about when I assigned a sampler version (A Taste of Chaucer) to Dame. I finally finished it this month. I have no shame in taking a very long time to finish a book, and Canterbury Tales was definitely worth the time and no harm for meandering as each tale can stand up on its own. The translation I have, no doubt from some long-forgotten library sale, was by J. U. Nicholson, and it had illustrations of the different pilgrims, which were fun. 

I also don't generally read a lot of commentary which means what I think about things may be quite obvious or quite wrong as far as I know. It struck me that you could hardly imagine any book ever written since beginning with something like The Miller's Tale and ending with a sermon on all the vices and virtues that would have done Jonathan Edwards proud. Perhaps the enduring popularity of the medieval era as a land for the imagination is an era where we could be fully human, vulgar and divine, before we were enlightened into severing our souls from our bodies. 

For educational value, not only is it a quintessential work of English literature, it was also a great exercise in learning to differentiate between what the characters are saying and what the author is saying. Are we really meant to commend Griselda, or what is meant by putting her story in a clerk's mouth (who could hardly have had much experience with women)? And if not, then what might it be showing us about abusers and their methods and their apologists?

Chaucer's little asides and deeply snarky humor were a lot of fun. I was left wondering why poor Sir Topas, which was hilarious, got cut off before it got started, or why when we finally get a woman who's not hoodwinking her husband nor a patient martyr, but reasonable and intelligent, she must be so deadly dull as Prudence? 

My favorite tale of all, though, was the Franklin's Tale. After all the displays of human shortcomings and sufferings, I was honestly on tenterhooks to know whether it would come out all right. Would the couple actually talk to each other? Would Aurelius hold Dorigen to the bargain he had tricked her into? And in that suspense comes a burst of generosity and grace, like the sunlight after a storm. What if, we spoke honestly and trusted those closest to us? What if instead of each grasping for what we could get, we received and gave with generosity?