Chancer's Canterbury Tales have always been classics.  This version just made them a little more fun for me.  I love the mid-evil, and hilarious collection of the 9 tales, along with the comic-style illustrations.  Students in 5th and 6th grades will get the most from this selection.  This book works well in fiction lessons.  I would use this book during fiction lessons in studying differences in characters.  The 9 tales with the 9 different characters gives a wonderful study in character differences, elements, and dynamics.

I finally decided I should check out Chaucer after URL Phantomhive's review of The Wife of Bath. To that end, I found an edition of the Canterbury Tales that seemed to have both the original and the English translation (on the left). I ordered it, but then kept looking around, and discovered another version of the Canterbury Tales that appeared to have both the original and the translation (on the right), this time on alternating pages rather than line by line. I ordered this one too, figuring that it would be best to make the call over which I preferred once I'd actually seen them.

 

Unfortunately, they don't appear to have quite the same tales. The Barron's interlinear version (left) lists:

- The General Prologue

- The Knight's Tale

- The Miller's Tale

- The Reeve's Tale

- The Cook's Tale (in this edition only)

- The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale

- The Franklin's Tale

- The Pardoner's Tale

- Prioress's Tale

- The Tale of Sir Thopas (in this edition only)

- The Nun's Priest's Tale

- The Manciple's Tale (in this edition only)

- Chaucer's Retraction (in this edition only)

And it's on a nice white paper.

 

The Bantam Classics version lists:

- The General Prologue

- The Knight's Tale

- The Miller's Tale

- The Reeve's Tale

- The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale

- The Merchant's Tale (in this edition only)

- The Franklin's Tale

- The Pardoner's Tale

- The Shipman's Tale (in this edition only)

- The Prioress's Tale

- The Nun's Priest's Tale

 

So unless some of those tales just happen to be labelled differently, each book has a couple tales missing from the other. Some of them look pretty short, but still.

 

I'm going to end up with two copies of the Canterbury Tales, aren't I?

I haven't had much time for leisurely reading (although my stack is seriously tempting me), but at least my school assignments have been fairly interesting, if at times somewhat tedious. 

 

I re-read Macbeth for an English paper, but I just kept wishing that I was back in high school English joking with my friends about Ian McKellen as Macbeth yelling at the ghost of Banquo. 

I also read The Wife of Bath's Tale a while back which, surprisingly, was actually pretty cool. I made a note that if and when I ever teach it, I would compare the Wife of Bath to Samantha Jones from Sex and the City. It was awesome to read a character like that in something like Chaucer- it made the language feel a lot less tedious.

Currently, I'm working my way through Paradise Lost, but it's slow going. Still, it feels like I'm accomplishing something as I read it. I think I'm enjoying it more because I just think of Supernatural as I'm reading. Also, it's in my giant English textbook, which I like to plop on a table and mark with washi tape tabs.

Alongside the first few books of Paradise Lost, my English teacher assigned a couple of chapters out of Gulliver's Travels. I just started reading the part where he's marooned on an island of intelligent horses and 'Yahoos', hairy animal-like savages who somewhat resemble humans. I've only read a few pages of it but it reminds me a bit of The Time Machine. I can't decide if I'm going to read the whole book yet.

 

I still read In Search of Respect here and there, but it's tough to read about the lives of people who really never even had a sliver of a chance at a good life. There are a lot of things that you don't really think about when considering why people can't escape extreme poverty. In one example I read, a neighbor of Philip's "subjects" (for lack of a better word) gets a good job at an office- a rare accomplishment and her first decent-paying job. She buys a new outfit for work- a bright yellow, tight jumpsuit. Her friends and boyfriend think she looks gorgeous and wish her good luck at her job- they don't even realize that the outfit alone will be enough to get her into trouble, and maybe even let go. They have no access to what "dressing nice" means in that situation. It's mind-boggling, but it's understandable- they're stuck in the bubble of their neighborhood's street culture, where "dressing nice" means something very different. 

 

I'm still keeping up with my readings in Freedom On My Mind for African American History class. Currently we're learning about the Underground Railroad... well, everyone else is learning about it. I already knew pretty much all that we've covered so far- I've had an interest in it since my dad taught me about it when I was very young. Harriet Tubman was ridiculously badass and if you haven't read much about her, you really should. 

 

It's been great reading epic works of literature and learning so much, but damn I can't wait to be done with this semester and get started on all my fun books! 

Apparently talking animals are the work of Satan.  I did not know this.  I feel so conflicted.

 

Apparently with Chaucer, the adultery is fine - it's the talking animals

 

:shakes head:

 

And the farts.  Apparently the farts are fine.

 

As much as I enjoyed Seymour Chwast's treatment of Dante's Divine Comedy, his Canterbury Tales never comes to life. Perhaps the success of Chwast's Divine Comedy was due to the inherently graphic nature of much of the Commedia and the sparseness of the comic's text—Chwast's Divine Comedy is something like a collection of single page posters of the most memorable scenes with little need for narrative. Chaucer's second masterpiece is an entirely different matter. The brilliance of Chaucer is both in the melody of his verse and in his varied, but often lively narratives, and this is something Chwast's comics cannot possibly deliver. Chaucer gives us a ribald Miller's Tale full of dirty slapstick. The infamous kiss in the dark and the vengeful poker to the bum are brimming with vulgar hilarity. Chwast gives us a stilted narrative with a zephyric pen and ink fart followed by what might as well be a scrub-brush to the bum. It isn't funny to see it. If the verses bring back giggling memories of raunchy middle school body humor, the comic embarrasses, reminding us of just how juvenile we once were. Much of the book seems to focus on Chaucer's ribaldry, and without any of the puckish charm of the English verses. These comic tales just fall flat amidst a swamp of limp prose narrative and boringly salacious imagery.