A classic in every sense of the word. Geoff is a very funny man and the tales told here are amusing, sad, lewd and bawdy. If I'm being honest - which I am - it isn't an easy read, infact at times it's relatively hard going. If you can stick with it then you will be rewarded for your endeavour.

Within a narrative about a visit to Canterbury, Chaucer tells the "tales" mostly written in verse. The general prologue to the tales, explains how Chaucer found himself, one day in the company of a group of pilgrims, riding from London to Canterbury. As they set out from their inn their host the innkeeper suggest that as they travel each pilgrim tell two tales. On their return to London, the teller of the best story wins a meal, paid for by all the rest.

Chaucer's most celebrated work was never completed, and modern versions of it are the work of scholars, who have attempted to piece together its various completed parts. In truth this version isn't the best and if you are seriously considereing buying a copy I'd seek out the Oxford University Press version edited by F.N. Robinson.

A massively satisfying experience.

The Canterbury Tales is Geoffrey Chaucer's collection of stories, with the device used being a group of pilgrims telling each other tales as they journey towards Canterbury. The group of travellers include men and women of different types and different occupations, so produces quite a few amusing and interesting moments throughout.

Pardoner’s Tale: This tale is a tale that made me think quite a bit. The theme of the tale is about repenting sins and the Pardoner creates this sense of horror for the travellers he’s telling the story to. The horror is if you don’t repent your sins to the pardoner then you will suffer some sort of mishap. Chaucer makes the narrator in the story important by making the character unimportant. The three rioters in the story are anonymous hoodlums and the narrator gives them no distinctive characteristics. This style is very different from the description of the WOB and the carpenter from the Miller’s Tale. The only distinction the Pardoner makes between the rioters is that one is younger. The rioters characteristics are uniformly negative, they’re greedy, murderers, drunks, this gives the Pardoner the opportunity to condemn a variety of sins. This tale makes me think of how we are as a society and the beliefs we believe in. It makes you question how the Christian religion works and how many religions facilitate actions and beliefs in our society. This tale is basically trying to scare people in repenting – that is the Pardoner’s purpose.

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.