The Canterbury Tales: The First Fragment (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Chaucer, Geoffrey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140434097 ISBN 13: 9780140434095

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1996

Synopsis

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About this title

Review:

"A delight . . . [Raffel's translation] provides more opportunities to savor the counterpoint of Chaucer's earthy humor against passages of piercingly beautiful lyric poetry."--Kirkus Reviews

"Masterly . . . This new translation beckons us to make our own pilgrimage back to the very wellsprings of literature in our language." --Billy Collins

"The Canterbury Tales has remained popular for seven centuries. It is the most approachable masterpiece of the medieval world, and Mr. Raffel's translation makes the stories even more inviting."--Wall Street Journal

From the Back Cover:

The First Fragment of The Canterbury Tales contains some of Chaucer's most popular and widely enjoyed work. Chaucer introduces his pilgrims in The General Prologue, a set of speaking portraits drawn with a loving clarity that makes no attempt to conceal imperfections. The pilgrims represent human society, and the tales of the Knight, Miller, Reeve and Cook reveal a variety of human preoccupations, particularly romantic and sexual love. Each tale is alive with Chaucer's skills as a poet, as a storyteller and as a creator of comedy. This edition is designed so that the First Fragment can be read as a unit. A very full glossary faces Chaucer's text, and a detailed set of explanatory notes follows it, so that students and readers approaching The Canterbury Tales for the first time can enjoy and appreciate the language of Europe's first great English poet.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0140434097
• ISBN 13: 9780140434095
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Alexander Michael