{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"154: Geoffrey Chaucer: "The Canterbury Tales"","description":"This week on StoryWeb: Geoffrey Chaucer\u2019s The Canterbury Tales.   Whan that aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of march hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which vertu engendred is the flour. . . .   Oh, how I loved learning how to recite these opening lines to \u201cThe Prologue\u201d of Geoffrey Chaucer\u2019s The Canterbury Tales. While I was by no means a scholar of medieval literature (modern literature being far more to my taste, as you know if you are a devoted StoryWeb listener), I reveled in learning about the language, the religious pilgrimage Chaucer\u2019s narrators were on, loved delving into their various voices.   What a magical storytelling device! Imagine thirty travelers walking from London to Canterbury to worship at the shrine of St. Thomas Becket. How would they while away their time? By holding a storytelling competition, of course, and regaling each other with one tale after another. Storytelling was an immensely popular form of entertainment in England at that time, and storytellers had enjoyed besting one another in contests for centuries. The prize for the winner? A free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return from Canterbury.   What emerges from this narrative device is one of the great masterworks of world literature. Pilgrims from all walks of life tell tales. As Oxford scholar Nevill Coghill notes, The Canterbury Tales offers readers a "concise portrait of an entire nation, high and low, old and young, male and female, lay and clerical, learned and ignorant, rogue and righteous, land and sea, town and country."   We listen as the merchant spins his fable and as the miller \u2013 who admits he is quite drunk \u2013 tells the uproarious and bawdy story of a cuckolded carpenter. And of course, no one can forget the wife of Bath\u2019s Arthurian legend, her pre-feminist insights about women\u2019s authority honed from her five marriages. Other tales are told by a knight, a reeve, a cook, a man of law, a friar, a summoner, a clerk, a squire, a franklin, a physician, a pardoner, a shipman, a prioress, a monk, and a nun\u2019s priest.   Chaucer began writing The Canterbury Tales in 1387, and it appears that the collection was unfinished when he died in 1400. Nevertheless, The Canterbury Tales -- twenty-four tales with over 17,000 lines of poetry \u2013 is considered by virtually everyone to be his masterpiece.   Think you wouldn\u2019t be interested in this 600-year-old collection of tales? You might be surprised! An easy way to dip a toe into The Canterbury Tales is to read a modern English translation. Once you\u2019ve laughed until you\u2019ve cried from reading \u201cThe Miller\u2019s Tale,\u201d maybe you\u2019ll even feel brave enough to try the late Middle English in which Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales. It takes some getting used to \u2013 and it can help to have an edition with the original Middle English and the modern English translation side by side. Fordham University\u2019s Internet Medieval Sourcebook provides a good online Middle English\/Modern English version of \u201cThe Prologue.\u201d Librarius provides parallel original text and translated text for many of the other tales.   It can also be fun to listen to an audio version of the tales in Middle English. LibriVox provides a useful collection of audio recordings of the various tales. When you listen, you\u2019ll quickly discover that I am practically butchering Chaucer\u2019s rich and rhythmic Middle English (told you I\u2019m not a medieval scholar!), but that doesn\u2019t stop me from thoroughly enjoying reading Chaucer\u2019s original lines of poetry aloud. They\u2019re just so darned fun to say!   For a unique perspective on The Canterbury Tales, read or listen to a five-part NPR series that retraces the steps of Chaucer\u2019s pilgrims to explore the Britain of today. The series includes an interactive map tracing the route from London to Canterbury.   Finally, you can go even further in your exploration of all things Chaucer by visiting Harvard University\u2019s Geoffrey Chaucer Page. Georgetown University\u2019s Labyrinth website provides extensive resources for Medieval studies.   Visit thestoryweb.com\/chaucer for links to all these resources and to listen to Professor Jess B. Bessinger, Jr., read \u201cThe Prologue.\u201d ","author_name":"StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups","author_url":"http:\/\/storyweb.libsyn.com\/webpage","html":"