I remember slogging through The Canterbury Tales in Middle English when I was in high school and although the language is beautiful, having to take time to decipher it all did diminish somewhat the enjoyment of a terrific collection of stories. Since most of us are more comfortable with modern English, a good translation makes all the difference, and Nevill Coghill's excellent translation does full version to Chaucer's book. Reading this version takes the work out of it and makes "The Canterbury Tales" a pure pleasure. Chaucer writes about everyman and his stories represent one of the motliest crews in English literature: the Wife of Bath who has put away five husbands and is looking for a sixth; the pardoner, the reeve, the clerk, the knight, and a host of others from all walks of life. There is something in here for everyone; my three favorite stories are the Pardoner's Tale; the Miller's Tale (reading this in Coghill's translation, I could see why it has been excised from the bowdlerized versions used in high school English classes; it's rude, crude and downright lewd, but it's so hysterical they had to sew my sides up again when I finally stopped laughing), and the Franklin's tale of the knight, the squire and the magician who outdo each other in chivalry. Antisemitism was commonplace in medieval Europe and Chaucer is no more free of it than anyone else of his time; but to say that The Canterbury Tales is not worth reading because Chaucer was true to his time is overstatement. One must accept that Chaucer was as human and imperfect as most of his peers; without compromising the fact that Chaucer was a literary genius who had a profound effect on English language and English literature.

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is one of the first great works of literature in the English language and are good reading for a number of reasons. They are written in "old English", however, and read like a foreign language for most of us. Barbara Cohen's adapted translation gives us four of the tales in contemporary English and therefore provides an excellent introduction to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Cohen's tales retain Chaucer's colorful insight into fourteenth century England including life as a knight, the horror of the plague, and the religous hypocrisy of the age. The illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman are vivid and tell a story all by themselves. I use Cohen's book as a supplement to teaching medieval history and literature to 7th and 8th graders.

The biggest hurdle in reading Chaucer is the language. Trying to read his work in Middle English is impossible without really good footnotes, and some of the "translations" are even worse--they're written in a high-blown, pompous style that takes all the fun out of the stories.

All this being so, I was delighted to find the Puffin Classics version retold by Geraldine McCaughrean! The tales are told in an easy-to-read, flowing style that captures the bawdy humor of the originals, without being over-crass (this is a children's book, after all.) I found myself often laughing out loud, and wishing I'd found this version much sooner, because it makes Chaucer fun to read! I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to try Chaucer but feels intimidated by the scholarly-looking versions available in the "Literature and Classics" sections. You won't become expert in reading Middle English, but you WILL see why The Canterbury Tales has such a wonderful reputation!