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The Canterbury Tales

Penguin Classics

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The Canterbury Tales

By: Geoffrey Chaucer, Nevill Coghill - translator
Narrated by: Daniel Weyman, Derek Jacobi, Jay Bernard, Lesley Manville, Seroca Davis, Michael Balogun
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Lesley Manville (winner of the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress and known for Phantom Thread and Mum), Derek Jacobi (winner of the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor and known for Gladiator and Gosford Park), Michael Balogun (known for National Theatre Live: Macbeth), Jay Bernard (writer of Surge, artist, film programmer and activist) , Seroca Davis (known for Prime Suspect and Doctor Who), Daniel Weyman (winner of Audiobook Narrator of the Year at the Audio Production Awards 2016 and known for Gentleman Jack and A Very English Scandal) and Roy McMillan (winner of an Earphone Award for narration on Conclave and award-winning producer). This definitive recording is translated by, and includes an Introduction by Nevill Coghill.

In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. A story-telling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight's account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath's Arthurian legend, to the ribald anecdotes of the Miller and the Cook.

Translation copyright © Nevill Coghill, 1951 and Nevill Coghill Ltd, 2019 (P) Penguin Audio 2019

Ancient, Classical & Medieval Literature Classics European Poetry Themes & Styles World Literature Celebrity
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Overall , this is a great production of The Canterbury Tales. However, one of the readers - Jay Bernard I believe - appears not to be a very skilled voice actor. They sound like a very young person who is artificially deepening their voice for some reason and it was so grating I had to skip over everything they read. The rest of the readers were excellent.

Excellent material let down by one poor reader

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I’m glad I’ve dipped into Chaucer so I could understand some cultural references. I was wary of the fact that I was listening to a translation, but may have struggled had I gone directly to the Middle English. The person who read the Squire’s Tale had such a flat, dull, serious voice I could barely stay awake. - I wished they’d fluctuated the vocal range to add some spark. Some narrators were better than others. Would be better to have one person read the whole thing as I found the switching of narrators awoke me from my ‘listening dream mode’ and my attention shifted into thoughts to adjusting to the new narrator’s voice and took attention from the story. Having said that, it’s probably a challenge to get it right - they’ve done a better job than I would do. So, I am grateful that Penguin made the effort. I hope a newer version will accept and fix the issues in this first attempt.

Ticking off Chaucer from my list

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I chose this version, purely for Derek Jacobi’s sake. I cannot contend that reasoning was wrong…
The ensemble’s performance as a whole however; did not inspire. Perhaps it would have been better in the original English; perhaps easier to raise enthusiasm to read that…

Disappointing

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This is a delight. Beautifully read by a superb cast. Thank you Penguin Classics and the cast.

many a tale

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for me this was a bit of a mixed bag. some stories were great, some I almost fell asleep, but it was definitely interesting hearing how things were way back when

its a classic and famous and all, but I got bored...

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