The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling by Peter Ackroyd (PDF)

Description

A fresh, modern prose retelling captures the vigorous and bawdy spirit of Chaucer’s classic Renowned critic, historian, and biographer Peter Ackroyd takes on what is arguably the greatest poem in the English language and presents the work in a prose vernacular that makes it accessible to modern readers while preserving the spirit of the original. A mirror for medieval society, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales concerns a motley group of pilgrims who meet in a London inn on their way to Canterbury and agree to take part in a storytelling competition. Ranging from comedy to tragedy, pious sermon to ribald farce, heroic adventure to passionate romance, the tales serve not only as a summation of the sensibility of the Middle Ages but as a representation of the drama of the human condition. Ackroyd’s contemporary prose emphasizes the humanity of these characters—as well as explicitly rendering the naughty good humor of the writer whose comedy influenced Fielding and Dickens—yet still masterfully evokes the euphonies and harmonies of Chaucer’s verse. This retelling is sure to delight modern readers and bring a new appreciation to those already familiar with the classic tales.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I’m sorry to rain on the parade of positive reviews here, but this “translation” of the “Canterbury Tales” strays too far from the original to be characterized truly as a translation (Ackroyd himself calls it a “retelling”).Chaucer is a suggestive poet, ambiguous, ironic; he can be crude at times, but he is always cleverly reversing himself and hiding his intentions from the reader. That (and the amazing poetry) is what makes him such a complex and delicious poet to read. Ackroyd’s prose, larded with the f-word and other expletives, just doesn’t capture the sense or the spirit of the original.Examples could be multiplied endlessly, so let me pick just two. In the infamous pear-tree scene in Merchant’s Tale, a randy squire copulates in a tree with May, the young wife of January, the old blind owner of the manor. January’s sight returns at the crucial moment and he witnesses his own cuckolding, which both he and the narrator have some trouble describing, until the gullible old fool lapses into a paroxysm of euphemism (“I thought your smock had lain upon his breast”) as he apologizes to his deceitful wife. At one point January does blurt out “He swyved thee!” (which is as close as Middle English comes to the f-word). Ackroyd uses this scene though as a pretext for exploding the f-bomb three times in less than a page, thereby missing most of the comedy that comes from shifting registers and the poet’s struggle to be explicit and delicate at the same time. Ackroyd also completely misses the hints in this same scene that May is pretending to be pregnant in order to get January to let her climb into the tree so she can satisfy her food-craving (J longs for an heir). Thus, the reader completely misses the significance of January’s stroking her belly at the end, since she may by now be with child by another man.Let me finish with an example that all Chaucer lovers will recognize — those famous opening lines (loosely paraphrased): “When April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root and bathed the sinews of every plant in the liquid whose force engenders the flower; when the Zephyr wih his sweet breath has inspired the tender crops in every wood and heath….” Nature is the point here; man comes in later. But not in Ackroyd! He translates, “When the soft sweet showers of April reach the roots of all things, refreshing the parched earth, nourishing every sapling and every seedling, then humankind rises up in joy and expectation.”If Chaucer had wanted humankind in these opening lines, he would have put humankind there. He didn’t. Instead, he is building up an expectation for a certain kind of poetry, teasing us, testing us. Of course, we expect men to appear in this spring setting, but Chaucer is staving off the moment when nature gives way to man, just as later at the end of this verse paragraph, he reverses direction again and surprises us with, of all things, pilgrimage as the natural outlet for the impulses of spring (“Thanne longen folk to goon on [wait, wait, wait] pilgrimages”)! Of course we know that pilgrimages can be excuses for boondoggles, but that’s an implication that emerges from the shift in tone in Chaucer and all the more tantalizing for being left unstated. Not so with Ackroyd, who mentions general tourism before he even gets to pilgrimage: “This is the best season of the year for travellers. That is why good folk then long to go on pilgrimage.” He thus loses all that delicious play and reversal of expectation. Boo!This unsubtle version is unworthy of the deft and evasive poet it follows. It may be fun to read (and maybe even a bad Chaucer is better than no Chaucer at all). But don’t mistake it for the real thing.

⭐I bought this book as I read a review by Mr. Jim Mullen on Franklin Registry–an upstate New York village paper. (Maybe you read his ‘It Takes a Village Idiot’ .) I hope these book reviews by Jim Mullen will take a form of a new book soon. They are hirallious and true.Peter Ackroyd’s unpretentious but knowledgeable writing is very satisfying. I am going to read his biography on Shakespear next.

⭐Amazing book! Peter Ackyroyd’s translation makes this timeless classic accessible to everyone. The humor is inescapable even to readers who may not be familiar with the lives of 15th century English clergy and the working class.

⭐An excellent interpretation! Wonderfully told by Peter Ackroyd.

⭐I had heard so much of what a great book C.T. was. Unfortunately Chaucer’ characters all seem to have an identical trait. Why say yes or no when you can use 100 words to answer? Everybody just keeps going on and on and on…

⭐Ok for those who cannot read Chaucer in Middle English.

⭐Book arived in perfect condition.

⭐For the low-star reviewers and commentators:Hey, people! Traduttore, tradittori. (“Every translator is a traitor.”) There’s no such thing as a perfect translation, and few “great” ones, if you demand a virtual reproduction of all the author’s nuances of style and tone, many of which are not recoverable after six centuries anyway.Nor is there such a thing as a “definitive” (and *readable*) translation, which implies that no further attempt is needed by any presumed philistine who might dare challenge the “definitive” version. Or at least not until the next “definitive” translation is declared, that is. As it must be.And Ackroyd, as all acknowledge, doesn’t even call his book a translation but a “retelling.” That’s not an accidental choice of words. Why bash him for not doing what you want? What he does he does very well.What that is, is to make Chaucer accessible to readers who would never, ever, read the original except under classroom duress. They would be unlikely to notice and appreciate the nuances that concern you. Nor would they read Neville Coghill’s or Donald Howard’s verse translations. Maybe it’s their loss, but we’re not all at ease in Middle English, or partial to long narrative verse in endless rhyming couplets (undoubtedly amazing in English in the fifteenth century), or so ready to project onto the text our own interpretations of why Chaucer, six hundred years ago, chose to arrange things one way instead of another.Take the average reader. Have that reader struggle for weeks with Chaucer’s Middle English. Which will impart to memory a better sense of what “The Canterbury Tales” are like – the real one, or Ackroyd’s retelling?No one will come away from Ackroyd thinking Chaucer is a bore (or a “drag” as we called it when I took Middle English at a large and prestigious university, though admittedly there were a few amusing moments).The tales have never seemed quite so alive, the characters so real, or the narrator such a keen observer as in Ackroyd’s retelling. I have to believe that that’s how Chaucer wanted them to seem in the fourteenth century.Besides, the best way to appreciate any translated classic is to read more than one translation. There’s a big difference between scholarship, which requires the original, and plain appreciation, which doesn’t.(For those who want a straight prose translation, I recommend David Wright’s fluent and faithful version, published in Oxford World’s Classics.)

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