Reader Score
70%
70% of readers
recommend this book
The Canterbury Tales has entertained readers for centuries, with its comic animal fables, moral allegories, miniature epics of courtly love, and rollicking erotic farces that bring fourteenth-century England to life on every page. The gloriously varied stories, narrated by a group of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, are peopled with saints, sinners, and ordinary mortals in a vivid panorama of the medieval world. This prose translation renders these tales as accessible and irresistible to modern readers as they were to Chaucer's contemporaries.
DAVID WRIGHT (1920-1994) was born in South Africa and died in England. He was a poet who drew inspiration from Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales, both of which he translated into modern English.
"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