Canterbury Tales is complete at last! It took me longer than I expected to finishing this book, which I’ll talk about more about further on. I would say that my main takeaway at the end of this book was surprise. Read on to find out why I’ll never look at medieval writing the same way ever again.
Plot summary
Somewhat like Tales of the Arabian Nights, this book is tales within tales, although not as many layers as the Eastern read. In essence, a group of pilgrims meet on the road to a shrine in Canterbury. To make the journey more enjoyable, one of them sets a wager: each person must tell their best story on the way to Canterbury. The winner get a free dinner. On the way home, they have to do the same thing, with another free meal as a reward. All 15 members of the group take up the challenge and their tales complete the remainder of the book.
Interestingly, this book is technically incomplete. Chaucer never finished writing the tales that marked the return journey. The book ends with the last tale, when the city of Canterbury is being approached. You never find out who won the competition, or what stories they’d tell on the way home. However, considering Chaucer was handwriting and compiling the entire book by hand, it’s a pretty impressive feat.
For my more technical readers, I will note that my copy of the book was translated into modern English. This made for much easier reading, but obviously wasn’t quite the same authentic experience. But if you’re up for that, be my guest!
What I enjoyed: fun windows into history with a dollop of poetry
Unsurprisingly, there are strong similarities between this book and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The entire book is written in poetry, which made for a unique reading experience. I love poetry, and so it was certainly enjoyable to roll through the stories in this format (for a while anyway, more on that below).
These tales were a window into another world. I loved seeing how religion played a part in society in medieval England, as well as the customs and language. I was surprised to see some very adult themes included in the book, which shook my understanding of this time as straight-laced. No age is ever golden, and these tales will certainly stop you thinking they were! I enjoyed that.
What I struggled with: a little too much medieval poetry and rather raunchy
That poetry I mentioned before? Well, by the end I was beginning to get a little tired of it! Probably this book is better read in small doses, rather than every night.
Many tales are surprisingly raunchy. I didn’t enjoy those elements, as I found them far too detailed for my liking. Even the time-honoured tale of Chanticleer got a few adult-themed additions. A little shattering when you’ve grown up with the PG version in picture-book form!
Overall, this was a surprising and interesting read. If you read in small sittings, glossing over some of the more explicit parts, it’s an enjoyable and historically significant book. Just don’t read it aloud without doing a page scan …
