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The Canterbury Tales [Blackstone]
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The Canterbury Tales [Blackstone]
Narrated by:
Martin Jarvis, Jay Carnes, Ray Porter, John Lee, Malcolm Hillgartner, Ralph Cosham, Simon Vance
Buy Now for £16.99
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By:
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Geoffrey Chaucer
About this listen
Thus we hear, translated into modern English, 20-some tales, told in the voices of knight and merchant, wife and miller, squire and nun, and many more. Some are bawdy, some spiritual, some romantic, some mysterious, some chivalrous. Between the stories, the travelers converse, joke, and argue, revealing much about their individual outlooks on life, as well as what life was like in late 14th-century England.
©2003 Gavin Menzies (P)2008 Blackstone AudioListeners also enjoyed...
Olde English classic
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A mixed bunch of tales but good insight into past.
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Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Only for those who liked good rhyming schemes.What was one of the most memorable moments of The Canterbury Tales [Blackstone]?
The friar's taleAny additional comments?
I want to translate all future books into rhyme.Also, its not olde or middle English, very listenable.
A Spot o' Banter
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If there were just one audiobook in your library, this should be it. It is no exaggeration to say that it could transform the way all of us enjoy and understand, not just the nature of the novel, but the relative standing of Chaucer and Shakespeare, Chaucer and Dickens, Chaucer and just about any author you love and admire.
I wonder how many readers, teachers, academics even, have ever read, let alone enjoyed Chaucer's "Tale of Melibee"? Have sat back and been not just impressed but riveted by "The Knight's Tale"? Have appreciated the scope and wit of "The Monk's Tale"? I've been teaching Chaucer all my life, have never doubted he is the father of the novel, the grandfather of Shakespeare and Dickens and Kafka, but it's only now I've really glimpsed the extraordinary range, the intellectual strength, the remarkably inclusive humanity of his vision. Of course the well-known tales are all comic masterpieces: The Millers and Reeve's, Tales, the Franklin's, Pardoner's Prologue and Tale, the Clerk's and the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale are corner stones of English Literature. But without reading, as very few of us ever have, Chaucer's major tales, the very long ones, we have been missing out in a big way. It's rather like those who love Bach on the strength of the Brandenburg Concertos but have never really got to know the Cantatas where by far his greatest music lies.
What's absolutely wonderful, revelatory, about this recording is the excitement, the deep understanding, the sense of vigour and drama the readers have for every line they read. Beautifully clear voices on the whole but above all these readers, unlike many on the lamentably miscast and under-rehearsed Penguin version, seem to have been steeped in Chaucer all their lives and passionately want to share with the Listener what they have long known and enjoyed. They take "Melibee", as it should be taken, absolutely seriously and reveal that it is a major work, perhaps the greatest Christian homily in English, worthy to compare with Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy": which Chaucer translated and which is the cultural source of so much of his thinking, as it was of Shakespeare’s and of most great writers of the Renaissance.
What emerges from the whole recording is the remarkable range of Chaucer's reading and his infectious enthusiasm for knowledge and thinking from all traditions, classical and Biblical. His extraordinary ability to make scholarship come alive, to matter to us all. In a better world, Donald Trump would listen to this recording of "Melibee" and we would all be living in a happier place. Students of English Literature who have listened to it will never dismiss that tale again as a tedious diversion up a cul de sac. It is absolutely central to the way we read "The Canterbury Tales" as a whole.
But all the other tales are read with a similar sense of delight, engagement and appreciation. The modernisation of course loses some of the verbal energy of Chaucer's text: I hope these readers will one day give us the original middle English version. But this version is ideal for all readers, a box of delights waiting to be relished over and over again. Five stars are not enough. This is an audiobook which could transform the way we all think about Chaucer and the power of the written word!
A Magnificent, Revelatory Achievement!
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English Classic
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