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GeofreY Choucer
the son of o.welljo-do ond
wos born in London obout 1340'
As o boy' he served os o
merchont'
wine
well-connected
ond loter os o volel in ihe

of ulster'
ffi;;; ; ;untess
his copture while fishlins in
Hil;;"s;l. rn-rsoo, oner
his ronsom' ond lolerchoupoid
eJworo
il:;#;;iJ
queen
pn-nipo o" Roel' o moid of honor to tlre
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onn or Gount' choucer's polron'
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mony yeors in royol employmen:t'
5

os

London' os justice of
.onioirri oi-"*orn' tr ine port of
Porliqment His

ond oi o member or
5J; t-K;;i,
on uoiiout missions to-Fronce ond
him
oopoinlments iook
ond Peirorch ond
;5'V. ;ffi L o"orv met Boccoccio
thqt ore monDonte-influences
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inl
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in his own
ifest
'""'i'norti;t

peo"u" it commonlY divided inio threeos o

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;;;";*iiicent

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olihe opporentlv 120

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mosterpiece
tior
ffiJ.; h;'bi.;";Jioiis
firsi of Englond's

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of the

Rosiond The-Book
tronslotion of the Romon-e
'ot;J;; in. rtrion trszirasl' includins The House of

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AbbeY

t
TCanterbury Tclles
byGeoffrey Ghaucer

Bontom Closscs
your bookseller for these other British Clossics

Ask

EMMA by Jone Austen

MANSFIELD PARK by Jone Ausien
NORTHANGER ABBEY bY Jone Austen
PERSUASION by Jone Austen
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE bY Jone Ausien
SENSE AND SENSIBILW by Jone Austen
PETER PAN by J. M, Borrie

Edited bY A, Kent Hieotl

ond Consionce Hieott

JANE EYRE by Chorlotte Bront

VILLETTE by Chorlotle Bront

Selected, with tronslotions, o criticol

introduction, ond notes by the editors

by Emily Broni
SECRET GARDEN by Fronces Hodgson Burnett
CANTERBUR TALES by Geoffrey Choucer

WUTHERING HEIGHTS
THE
THE
THE
THE

MOONSTONE by Wilkie Collins

\ /OMAN lN WHITE by Wilkie Collins

urnnr or DARKNESS on THE SECRET SMRER by Joseph conrod
LORD JIM by JosePh Conrod
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GREAT EXPECTAiIIONS by Chorles Dickens
HARD TIMES by Chorles Dickens
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY by Chorles Dickens
OLIVER TWIST by Chorles Dckens
THE PICI{/VICK PAPERS by Chorles Dickens
A TALE OF TWO CITIES by Chorles Dickens
SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE COMPLETE NOVELS AND STORIES.
VOLUMES I & ll by Sir Arthur Conon Doyle

MIDDLEMARCH by George Eliol

SILAS MARNER by George Elioi
HOWARD'S END by E. lV'!, Forster
A ROOM WITH AVIEW bY E. M Forsier
THE WND lN IHE WILLOVVS by Kenneth Grohome
EAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD bY ThOMOS HOTdY
JUDE THE OBSCURE bY Thomos Hordy
THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE by Thomos Hordv
THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE by Thomos Hordy
TESS OF THE D'URBEI,/ILLES by Thomos Hordy
BEOWULF AND OIHER OLD ENGLISH POEMS

Tronsloted by Consionce B Hieott

by Rudvord Kipling
KIM by Rudyord Kipling

CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS

LADY CHAITERLEY'S LOVER bv D. H Lowrence

SONS AND LOVERS bY D. H Lowrence
FRANKENSTEIN bY MorY ShelleY
DR. JEI{YLL AND MR. HYDE by Roberi Louis Stevenson
KIDNAPPED by Robert Louis Stevenson

er

ISIAND by Roberi Louis Stevenson

DMCULA by Brom Stoker
GUTLIVER'S RAVELS AND OTHER WRITINGS bY JONOIhON SWifT
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a-II
i

PREFACE

. This

]HE CANTERBUI?/

TALES

A Bontom Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY

Bontom edtionlMay 494

Eontom Ciosslc edilionlMorch 1981
42 prinlings lhrough Jonuory 1990
First

Cover pointing "The Plgrimoge lo ConferburY."

by Thomos Sfolhard. 180-7 {detuA,
courtesy of the Tob eoilery, London.
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For nformotion oddress: Bonfom Books.
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PI?INTED IN THE IJNITID STAES OF AMERICA

252423222120L9r8L7

book offers a massive selection from The Canterbury

Tales together with a facing-page translation designed as both
a help to the beginner and as an independently readable
enrity.
Most people who are acquainting themselves with Chaucer
for the first time do so in a class in literature, where the tirire
allotted to t}:re Tales must be short. If they use a translation,
they may read enough to begin to see how a number of tales
illuminate each other and what the whole work is like, but
they do not hear Chaucer's voice. This seems a pit consider.
ing how much easier for us his language is than a foreign one.
Conuariwise, if they read in the original "The Prologue" and
two or three of the tales, they hear the voice but miss the variety
and multiple eference.
The present book seeks to overcome this dilemma. We think
that what we offer here speeds comprehension, so that more
can be read, and provide$ flexibility, so that pats can be read

in the original and parts in translation il necessary.

We think that a facing-page ranslation will bring understanding of the original faster than do marginal glossing and
notes at the bottom of the page, because these latter aids often
some of the syntactical relationships that leave

do not ciarify

It is true that anyone who has an

acquaintance with the syntax of the Revised Version, and with
Latin, a Romance language, and one Germanic language tresides English, needs little help with Chaucerian English; but
any teacher who has attentively put an American undergraduate clas through its first weeks or even months witl:. the Tales
knows that Chaucer is a little more difficult than ripe literary
scholars are likely to imagine. Of course, an.interlinear trans"
lation offers as much help as we do hee, but its continual
leapfroggings cannot be followed comfortably.
most beginners at sea.

Like most other people whe are interested in poetry, we

want to help everyone to an understanding of as much Chauce
as possible, as rapidly as possible. We believe that this book
offers the way to do it, We know as well as some of our readers
the shortcomings oI both our theory and orr execution, rnd
v

vt

ti

PRETACE

we are exaspeated by them; but we loot in vain for a better

way, "The dart is set up . . . Cacche who so may, who renneth
best lat see." We have already heard the first question of those
with classroom experience; our an$wer is that, {or recitation
purposes, an. opaque object may be interposed. For the rest,
if a student shows a comptehension of Chaucer's meaning,
we do not think that it makes much difference where he got it.
We have based our text on that of W' W' Skeat (Clarendon

his spelling is phonetically most consistent. In a beginner's book with translation, the admied

Press, 1900), because

alternatives (most nearly moden MS spelling for easiest recognition of words, or attachment to spellings of one MS) make less
sense. Where Skeat's reading difiers from that of the more

modern texts of Robinson or Donaldson, we have made ou

own choice, generally after consulting the variants listed by
Skeat and Robinson. We have departed from the authority of

all seniors very infrequently, and at only one notable spot

("Nun's Priest's Tale" 3386, in Robinson's numbering). Something is said about our policy of translation, beginning on
p. xxii. Eacb of our selections is complete, excePt that only the
last eleven lines appear of the "Introduction to the Pardoner's
Tale" (not "The Padoner's Prologue," which is complete)'
An asterisk in either text signals an exPlanatory note which
may be located in a glossary at the end of the book. The
glossary is arranged alphabetically,

in

immediately preceding the asterisk

t'
I

CONTENTS

fnhoduction

ix

THE PROLOGUE .......:

THE KNIGHT'S TALE
THE MILLER ....
THE WIFE OF BATH
THE MERCHANT
THE FRANKLIN'S TALE
THE PARDONER
Glossary

.... ..

Bibliography

2
42
146

.........

I82
240
296

338

THEPRIORESS..

THE NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE

........

......370
. .. .. .. . 384
415

423
I

each case under the word

in the text'

lr
I

I
I

lt

it
lt

I)

I
I

INTRODUCTION
Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1343-1400) and The Cantetbury Tales
Little is known about Chaucer personally, although one must
be very perverse not to like him after having read his Poetry
It is saf to say, at any rate, that he was one of a number of
court poets of'the latr Middle Ages in western Europe. Although such a man would find his place.among courts and the
nobility, he would probably be a bourgeois or a lesser noble;

the high nobility generally ilad no time for the skills involved.
He would often write of iove in a long-standing tradition for
a class that was publicly and privately much occupied with
love's power. "poit" in'the stiictly modern sense is not the
word fr such a writer, for besides short lyrics his output might
include almost any of the forms of literature, narrative and
otherwise, known to the day; and "court" is deceptive, too,
since, aside from courtiers, his audience would probably in'
clude some churchmen, civil servants, and students and a growing class of literate bourgeois. Unlike a modern Poet, he would
almost automatically be held learned, or sage: whether or not
his learning went very deep, he belonged to the wold of

letters, one of whose functins was the transmission of uuth

and wisdom; he was expected.to be a source of information
on the world and what was above and below it, to cite'ancient
saws and instances, and to know what was important in other
books, particularly the Latin classics. He might also. be (as
Ghaucei was) a cultural middleman in a more systematic sense
translator into his own language of works of moral wisdom
-a
and the like. However secla o classical his poetic interests
might be, these would finally be subordinated to a Christian
view of things. But in spite of all this, it was not excluded at
he should wlite both musingly and satirically, and a liking
for compositions so intended easily coexisted with a desie for
in the minds of some of his audi-o." toie-t kinds of writing
ence. Finally, there would be something anomalous about his
position as a writer per se: in spite of the theoretical respect
of th" l"t" Middle Ages and the Renaissance for letters, such a
man did not have the institutional or economic standing that
mass publication has given to later authors. His work did not

i
I

I
I
I

I
I

K:'

"t
reach people through printed books but n-as recited ad ci.
culated in manuscript copies, and as a poer pure and cimple
he would be the kept man of one or a succession of patrns
who did not view him as an esrabed iimb of rhe social
order. If he did not become some kind of churciman or make
himself useful as a kind of ciril snanr, he r+zs likely to feel
self-conscious and uncertain about his o$.n ole, as e extreme
case of Dante shows,
For Chaucer this problem sems to have solved itself: he
served his rulers, probably well, in nonpoetic capacities From
one point of view his career formed only a step in the rise of
a bourgeois family. His grandfather and father were London
wine rnerchants. A woman who is almost surely his granddaughter died a duchess. We first 6nd Chaucer himself :rround
age fourteen as, most likely, a page in rhe household of one
of Edward III's daughters-in-law. In his subsequent career he
was a trusted emissary to the Continent for Edward III and
Richard II, held a number of fairly important administradve
positions, and was highly though unevenly rewarded by these
kings and by their successor, Henry fV. Part of his good fortune may have been due to his marriage: his siste-in-la*' was
first mistress then wife of John of Gaun! a powerful son of
Edward III and the father of Henry IV.
Chaucer was, then, a widely traveled, substantial citizen with
some gift for affairs. In addition, to survil'e and prosper, however chancily, under three kings and withour a 6xed place in
any ecclesiastical or aristocratic hierarchy, he must hale dis.
played tact, adaptability, and at leasr occasionat husrle. ]fuctr
beyond that, the known facts simply tantale, because they
can be interpreted in so many different ways. \Ve kow that
he was well-educated and widely read, but -e ae nor sure
how much or in what way. He would natualiv speak Frencb,
as the ruling classes had done since the Normn Conquest;
he is the earliest poet of the first ank to rrrite Engiish since
Anglo-Saxon times. His Latin is natural in a boohish m"n. IIis
knowledge of Italian works, however, is rarer in an Englishmn
of his time; what part his missions to Iraly plaled in -uLLc is not
known. Apparently he liked the help of a French translarion
when he worked with a Latin or Italian manus<ript_ \l-e do

not know to what extent he really had reverss in hir caeer

(he very likely had some). We do not know *.heer he was
always scrupulous, what his marriage and familv *.ere like,
what kind of relationship he had wirh his closest associares.
The innkeeper of tbe Tls describe$ him as "elvish"-{etiring

xi

INTROD{JCTION

INTRODUCTION

and tending to stare at e ground; ad Chaucer describes his

*gi-." at"one time as cons;ant reading after. he has retuned
h8o Uis work-like a hermit, excePt that he indulged in little
eremitical absdnence' We do not know how much of this is
irony.
Bfore coming to The Canterbury Tales in what may have

been 1386, Cha'ucer had written a large number

some now lost. Ttrose most read today are an elegy

of works'
in "dream

vision" fom for the first wife of John of Gaunt (The Book of
the Duchess), two other ee- visions (The House of Farne'
The Parlement af Foules), one of the Sreat romances of the

Middle

Ages

(Troilus and'

Criseyd,e), and

series

of

"Saints'

oi Cipia" generally caTled The- Iegend o!-G?.oq

W"o*rn. 'I]ne tales ii the cuimination of his career' He died
while it was still unfinished. According to its "General Pro'
logue," irty or so people, who happen to represent almost

legends

Ages, ar9 to tell two tales

e".h'ott a pilgrimage fom London to the shine of St' Thomas
Becket in at terbury and two more tales on the way back'
Such a program had nothing unnatural about it: pilgrimages
to shrinis were mass activities in e Middle Ages, partly be
cause they were as likely to be vacations as religious ob
servances. Wherever Chaucer got his idea for this scheme
in{there were a numbe like it in the fourteenth century,
difof
it
was
made
he
what
Decameron),
Boccaccio's
it.taittg
ferentbom anything else in literary history. The stories which
the pilgrims tU a in widely herent literary genres and
styfei, a'"a almost each of es [ational medieval forms is
turned into something surprisingly new. In addition, a story
is ften so well tted to i pilgrim's character and oPinion
that tale and teller illuminate each other; and the interPlay

eviry social ilpe of th" "te Middle

between e often very discordant temPeraments and ews

of the pilgrims, both in direct interchanges and in their tales'
is a frter eiement in t}is highly complex and satis{ying
literary pattern.
Critics have generally praised in e Chaucer of t-he Tles
the power to show, not ;imPly PeoPl9 doing things f9I g99d
and eir actions are really like,
ot u1, but what those people
-become
more vital and individual
personalities
Eo ihat tleit
and life-enriching than those of many people whom we know
intimately. Certainly he is the poet with an eye for those
essenceg ihat make a woman a particular woman or even a
rooster a particular roostet; and he is justly^acclaimed for his
healy hi'-anity, his joy in people and actions as they are-

J"

xu

INTRODUCTION

not ideally powerful, beautiful, or

wise, impotent, ugll'. 9r

ri"pia, gooa'o. evil, but fascinating Particular creations which'

i{;. r? big enough men, we coniemplate dispassionately and
th. ,"*""time riith gratitude and gusto' Another aspect of
"i mastery that is often stressed today is-his humorous ironyhis
*h"t *igt be called manipulation without -espousal: he has
* gt.", iange a.rd precision of feeling for levels of literary
styTe and foi the di?Ierent ways of looking at life which ae
te springs of individuality, and he uses these to-sPeak to us

indirictl/ and. ironically. The reality of a situation and the

style in *hi.tt tt. Presents it may humorously clash' or one
atrrro.phere of ideis and feelings, built up -perfectly' -may

ironic'ally undermine a previous ott" no less per{ect, or a slight

twist of expression -"y prrt into doubt a- whole emotional
effect; and ihe result in each case is a kind of double vision
which implies a third thing of value. Admittedly, only-very
simple-miirded people, o. tott., lack all irony of this kind,
for'most of ui can visualize and even occasionally follow
several mutually incompatible sets of reactions to a given situa-

tion. And it is true s well that only very single-minded

authors do not consciously maniprrlate stylistic levels with
ironic intentions. But Chucer's virtuosity in this direction
is such that one is tempted to say his work perfectly illus"
trates one view of what irt, as contrasted with life' ought- to
be: where life, to be successful, conceives of event and action
only as they subserve intention, belief, and need' art must
attend to ull urp".tt of what happens for their own sake'
without interest in the attair,ment of a practical end' Finally'
however, it is likely to be an unhistoricaL exaggeration to pus!

this characterization of Chaucer's work to its conclusion' useful

as it is, for many readers still register, behind his exquisite
modulations of siyle and fertile creations of role (even one
for himself) a uniiary, if coraplex, personality and viewPoint'
Chaucer lived to complete only "The General Prologue"
and twenty-two of his talLs (two others are unfinished)" There
are many iigns that he changed his plans as he worked' Since
we do nt have all the pilgrims' linking speeches between the
tales, we are not sure ii w"hat order Chauier wished his work
made up his mind on this
to be read, if he ever completely
'more'
sometims widely differing
subject. T'he eighty and
manrrscripts in wtrlcL all or parts of the, Ties survive ae often
conradictory on this point as on much else'
One poini about the. creative pro::-ss behind most of these
tales piobably needs explanation. We ae used to modern

INTRODUCTION

xtii

novelist$ who use much personal experience in their books,

and we do not say they lack invention for doing so; we ask,
instead, wheer they have formulated the elements of , thei
storie including, probably, personal experience, in such a
way as to give a vision of life which is powerful and serviceable
to us. The question is ultimately the same with Chaucer, but
the most obvious plot elements which he formulates are likely
to be some other autor's story ather than personal experience '(as is the case, incidentally, with the majority of authorg
before the nineteenth century). Thus "The Knight's Tale"
depends for its plot and much else on a much longer tale by
Boccaccio and on some other literary sources; "The MiUer's
Tale" belongs to a whole family of narratives of which the
plots are very similar; and the climactic parts of "The Wife of
Bath's Tale," "The Franklin's Tale," and "The Pardoner's
Tale" belong, in the same way, to widespread plot families
for which Chaucer did not invent the main incident$. "The
Prioress's Tale" rests on legendary material. "The Nun's
Priest's Tale" is very close in plot to certain previously written
6rmples of e beast fable. Even "The Wife of Bath's ProIogue" is an amalgam of literary materials from many quarters.
In each case Chaucer was borrowing, sometimes very closely,
but what we must ask is how he has developed the borrowed
material. "The Knight's TaIe," which is closest of these ro its
main source, is much shoter than Boccaccio's story, transfers
the inteest fom Arcite to Theseus, deploys much less classical mythology, has a much firmer social context, is "philosophical" in a different way, and has, essentially, a different point.
The othe known instances of the plot of "The Miller's Tale',
are, by and large, just dirty stories, without character develop
ment or detail. The borrowed plot elements in the tales of

tle Wife, the Franklin, and the Pardoner share only the most
general similarity with thei analogues. "The priores's Tale',
contains more beautiful artifice than any other ffeatment of
the motif of the martyr child. "The Nun's Priesr's Tale" is like
no other beast fable ever written, whatever tle affinities of its
plot may be.
"The Knight's Tale," the longest of the selections here,
belonp to the flexible genre ol the medieval romance-that
is to say, it is a story in which men might see idealized images
of human behaor, in the persons of the highest social classes
behaving according to an exacting code in their special sphere
of love and wa. Action and language are stylized and formalized to a degree, and both joy and pathos are teated with

xiv

much rhetorical artifice. One way of looking at.is romance

is to see ia affinities with the later Elizabethan world of Shake
speae, Edmund $penser, and Sir Philip Sydney: man's soul,
the state, and the universe are all viewed in terms of a kind
of Christian Platonism, for much of which Chaucer depended
upon a work he had translated, Boethius' Co.nsolation of
Philosophy. The nature of the good ruler, of friendship, and
of love receive much attention. As in other taleg one needs
to recognize the trational medieval and Elizabethan emboment of passionate love in a God of Love, who in one of
his manifestations is a jealous and malign tyrant, arousing
jealousy and strife among his adherents. As Cupid, he has a
classical derivation, and other gods of the classical pantheon
play large pats in the narrative, Traditionall they exercise
arbitary and competitive asrological power from the planets
which bear their names, and before these influences (which
a modern biologist might call the hereditary and enronmental factors) man seems to be helpless. Arayed against
them, however, a supreme power, called here the Prime Mover,
works for a harmonidus, freely chosen accord (love in its other
sense): Theseus is its princely repesentative and the marriage
closes is its familial embodiment.
The romance is the most idealistic of the secular story forms
of the Middle Ages; the tale told by the drunken and boorish
Miller, which directly follows, belong:s to the most cynical and
earthy one, the fabliau. Examples of this form ae generally
peopled by the lower social oders. Its main convention is that
people are usually (and for the most part cheerfully) motivated
by lechery, gluttony, avarice, or sloth; only the very stupid
live by any other principles. Uniquely, Chaucer tansformed
this kind of narrative so that vhat egulaly is the baldly re.
lated plot and uproarious point of a lavatory story becomes a
marvel of witty double-entendre, telling detail, and characteri

with which the tale

zation.

It is worth noting that a pilgrim who had once been a

carpenter tries angrily to keep the Miller from telling his tale,

in which a

INTRODUC1TION

INTRODUCTION

c:penter is brought low. After "The Miller's

Tale," this pilgdm tells another fabliau (not induded here),

in which a miller is made riculous There are several such

opposing pairs of storytellers in t}lLe Tales; they usually belong to groups proverbially at odds with each other. Carpenters were not regularly enemies of millers, but reeves, or
state managers, were; and the forme carpenter i now e
Reeve of the pilgrimage.

xv

Another more subdued-pairing of tales is possibly pat of

the plan in the case of the Monk (a membei of the iegular
clergy) and the Nun's Priest (of the secular clergy). .;The
Yo"_k'l Tale" (not included here) consists of a series-oi mostly
Iugubrious, high-flown accounts, $ta*ing with Lucifer an
Adam, of the fall of the exalted by Fortune,s blow or Divine
decree, They are capped by e priest's instance of how someone in high degree fell bur was subsequenrly raised up again
(he ends up, in fact, at the rop of a tree). Fwerjore-tle

story is embellished with modish philosophical eflectins on

Fortune and Providence, and with high-flown rhetoric nd
solemnly adduced exemplary tales. The heroic subject of all
this is, howeve a rooster, and what is more, a rooster who
iS!, is- subject to concupiscence (being in the pride of
liyes _t
life, he is ripe for Fortune's blow), has viiions, an suffers
marital difficulties-like Adam, he wrongly accepts his wife'g
advice. This tale is a ransfomarion of yet anoiher medieval
literary genre, the beast fable, or beast epic: stories of Renard
t}te fox and his dupes were popular lng before and after
Chaucer,-generally for ttreir soial satire. But Chaucer,s nanylayered,_happily toppling pyramia of [terary nonsense is an
extremely bold, quite unprecedented development of the form.
Chaucer evokes various aspects of mariage through the
words of the Knight, the Miller, and the Nun;s priest, but he
focuses on tfiis institution in the so-called Marriage Goup,
represented in this book by three of its most important tales,

ose of the Wife, the Merchant, and the Franklin. Their

intenelationships are too complex to describe here" The last
of these tales is, like "The KnighCs Tale," a romance (a short
variety _called rhe Breton
,lai), and displays ttre only iind of
love. reladonship which the mature Chaucer was ipparently

willing_to take seriously in this highly serious gerrrei lrc thi:

maried pair in "The Keight's Tale,'; e man and wife here
are matched in age anJ background. They.are in accord in
other respects as well, because only the free choice of love
frou.Sht them together and because they are murually foebearing and animated by rue gentilesse-a key word hbre, in
"Jhe Knight's Tale," in Danre, and in the thirteenth-century
French Roman de la Rose, which Chaucer translated as h
eys.

_ A just

sense of Chaucerian irony and humor is needed to

balance this rale against the Wife'i and Merchant's contributions. The Wife in a long, prologue-a rtuoso piece of female monologue, recognizable to readers of both'sexes__and

-.r

xvi

the aged, rich, and lecherous knight ]anuary in his behavior

with his young wife have something in common. They both
claim to know the divinely .appointed purpose of marriage,
but the actions of both show that they have-an eye mainlylo
their own erotic and other satisfactions. They aim'at the domination and manipulation of their consort not at a marriage
of mutual forebearance znd gentiless: January essentially
buys his bride, whom he wants to be young and'pliable; th
Wife defends her practice with the rule at ihe woman
should have the mastery in marriage, and riumphantly enforces it through five marriages. Her tale illustrats her ule:
it opens with the most violent act of mastery which a man
can commit against a woman, and closes when that man attains his happiness by committing everything into his wife,s
hands. By a shrewd twist, "The Merchant's Tale," which is
neither a romance nor quite a fabliau, but should probably
be called a verse novella, shows the defeat of January: th
young wife both deceives and masters him with particular

It is a masterstroke of Chaucerian irony-that this

protagonist, the Merchant ostensibly telling the tale, and the
reader find themselves viewing the $ame events with entirely

grossness.

different feelings.
Of the two remaining tales, the Pardoner's is a swift and
deadly exemplum, an illustrative story embedded in a sermon

on avarice by this disgustingly avaicious professional preacher;

and the Priores's is a highly formal narrative in the genre of
'rMiracles of the Virgin" or "Our Lady," having affinities with
the Saint's Legend or tale of martyrdom. The simple pathos
of its immolation of innocence by villainy represents anoiher
side of Chaucer's art, although some readeis hive suspected an
ironical efiect even here, in the contrast between the Prioress's
approbation of the cruel punishment of the Jews in the tale

and her gentleheartedness otherwise.

AU C ER'S LAN GU AGE: Pronunciation, I d,i.om and,

Versification

CH

(Information on how to use the tanslation in this book is

given in Sec. 45, 46, below.)
Practically speaking, Chaucer's language is in some respects
a foreign one, in others identical with ours. What to do about
pronouncing it? One analogy suggests that we should be very
exact. We do not enjoy a rendition, no matter how soulful,
of Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" by a man who knows ttle

L,*'..

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

xv

English. Yet experience suggests that a poem has a high survival value and tat its nascent pattern of sound and meaning
can in large part be brought to life by someone whose mode
of speech is quite different from the author's. Certainly Shakespeare would be astonished, and probably irritated, at our
rendering o{ his verse, yet we think that we get along fairly
well without learning what is known about pronunciation in

his time.

If this latter argument appeals, e pronunciation of Chaucet's verse presents little dificulty: in order to preserve his
meter, do as Sec. 2, below, directs, and for the rest proceed as
in Modern English. Doing so, the reader may gain great satis.
faction, like the old gentleman in the Red Cross swimming
manual who swam a quarter-mile daily with a rudimentary
and lethargic breaststroke.
But the ensuing dislocation of the vowel system and of many
consonantal sounds of Chaucer's language stretches his poetry
so close to the breaking point that many teachers demand a
little more eftort so as to peserve most of the music of his
poetf,y as he himself probably heard it. Even so, he would find
our reading strange, but perhaps no more so than, say, an

Ausalian's rendering of Keats' ode seems to American eas.

Alough we are not certain of all features of fourteenthcentury sounds, and although the following description simplifies on what we do know, the beginner will be poetically
much safer in absorbing as much of it as he can. He may,
incidentall go much faster if he uses a recording of passages
fuom The Canterbury Tales. (A reliable one, spoken by H.
Kkeritz, is available from the National Council of Teachers
of English.)
We call the English of Chaucer's time Middle English (ME):
examples printed in italics below. He spoke and wrote the
London dialect of it-the one which has evolved into Modern
English (ModE): examples printed in bold-face. In becoming
Modli, ME changed the sound of many of its vowels and lost
many of its inflexions.
For introductory and review purposes, we may now summarize the rules that appear later below: Unsffessed vowels are
pronounced as in ModE except tlrat final in certain frequent

conditions is pronounced and that rhe last

in

wordJ like

peyned, (pa.ined) or gates musr be sounded. Suessed vowels are

stort or long. Short vowels ae pronounced as in modern

American except that short and o are pronounced in modern
British fashion. Long vowels are generally prouounced (lesr

XVi

INTRODUCTION

often spelled) like long vowel sounds in Continental language$; these sounds must be remembered, There are two
kinds of long e and o. The sounds of five diphrhongs must
also be rememberedl ei (ey, ai, ay), au (aw), ew (eu, u) oi (oy),
ou (ou, also o, before glr), Long and short vowels ae identifiid
as such in vaious ways. Short i is so spelled; long i is generally
spelled y in this book. Shorr z is spelled z or (next to certain
letters) o,' the long u sound is spelled ou ot ow. A, e, and o,
are long when doubled or in cerrain kinds of syllables; they
ate most often short in other situations. Apart from the longshort distinction, the two kinds of long in ME words may be
distinguished by e spelling in equivalent ModE words; the
two kinds of long o, by tJle sounds in the equivalent ModE
words. The diphthong spelled ou or ow is distinguished from
long u spelled ou ot ow by the sound of equivalent ModE
words. The diphthong u when spelled z is similarly dis.
tinguished fom short z, so spelled. Consonants are pronounced as in ModE, except for ch. We now proceed to greater
detail.
VOWEL

SOUNDS

Unstressed vowek. (1) Unstessd (unaccented) vowels all

verge on the sound of .a in sofa, as in ModE. For example, all
the vowels except the stressed one in unaccented verge on this
sound in natural utterance. In ME such sounds thus take
cae of themselves. But if the natural main stess, the length
of the word, or the slow pace of utterance forces you to stress
a vowel, follow the rules about stressed vowels, (2) But regularly give tlle sound of a in gofa to the unsressed e at the end
of a word or syllable, unless the next word or syllable begins
with a vowel or an ,?i Chaucer's take has two syllables, but in
take our wey it };;as only one. Semely (eeemly) has three syllables. In looth were hm, were has only one syllable (the of
/im is scarcely sounded, if at all, so that were is really followed
by a vowel sound). But if these rules do olence to meter in
a particulaf line, they may be abrogated. (3) Sound the unstressed in the endings -es, -ed,, etc,: peyneil (naired), bedes
(beads) each have two syllables.
Stressed vowels. (4) Such vowels are either long or shorL
(5) Short e, i, u are pronounced as in the following ModE
equivaleins of the following ME word$ bed ped), ftis (is),
fal (full). (6) Short is like o in lot as mosr Americans pronounce it, or like the a in German konn: ME sat, that. (7)

Short o as in Modern British hot, French eoq:. Iot, I-ong c as

in father maken (m.a}.e). (9) Long e. Two kind* Close long e

l-\

INTRODUCTION

xix

(tongue close to roof of mouth) is like a in name: teeth, gree

(favor). (10) Open long e (tongue lower down, to incrase
opening) is sounded like ea in besr: beem @ean), greet
(sreat). (ll) Long r'(generally spelled y) as i in nachine:
t2d.en (rtde), lyf Qife). (12) I-ong o. Two kinds. Close long o
as in tone: gooil. (13) Open long o as in fork or as aw in raw:
go,-hoom (home). (14) I"ong a (spelled ou, ow), sounded as oo
in loot: you, yow (yow).
. Diphthongs. (15) Ei (spelled ei, ey, ai, ay) sounded like ay
in day: day, weilauey. (16) Au (spelled au, aw), sounded like
ou in out: chaungeth, awe, (17) Ezr (spelled et), e7t,, z) sounded
as in few: knew, adieu, accuse, uertu. (lB) Ol' (spelled oi, oy),
sounded as in coy: coy, boile. (19) Ou (spelled olt,, ou, and
sometim-es o before gft) sounded as in thought, proao'- rced
slowly: hnowed, soule, thoghte.
SPELLINC OF VOWEL SOUNDS

Length of Yowels. (20) Any vowel before a doubled consonant is short: dradd.e (dreaded), bettre pettet), brimrne
(brim), pottes. (21) In this rext, i is intended ro be short and
y is used for long i: smith, srnyte. B\t 2 is not long when it
appears in the diphthongs @y, ey, oy, or when it appears ar tle
end of a word: many, sobrely, The pronoun .f ii-so written,
b-ut it is pronounced as a long t. (ZZt The sound of long z is
always spelled ou or ow. (23) The sound of shorr u is spelled
u gl o.The o spelling occurs only next to letters made (like z)

wi parallel upright strokes in

manuscripts: some, sonne

(zaq), come, loae, aboue. Follow e pronunciation in the

equivalent ModE.word. (24) A, e, aid o are long when
doubled: caas (caw), beem (beatn), gon (so, gone). (?-b) A., e,
9 is long in a srressed nexr-rllast syllable of a longer word,
if91 the
a, e, or o in question is followed by only one consonant
by
tl,
and if, also, that consonanr or r is immediately fol9r
l_owd by another voweh date, lepe (leap), brother, fijtene,
forbere (to forbear). (26) Apart from Secs. Zg, 24, a, e, and. o
are most frequently short: carye (carry; three syllables with
stress on Est), hat, men, God,. But note these long vowels: e,
he.
-Close

when

ModE

it

and open long e and, o. (27) Regularl long is close

corresponds to any spelling except ea in the equivalent,

_word,:

degree, greete (greet). Exeptions:

herei

(&leat),

d,ere (de*), and some other words have tlose long e in spit'e
of modern- ea spelling. (28) Regularly long e is open when it
conesponds to the spelling ea iu the modern form f the word:

I
I
t

'l
INTRODUCTION
heeth @eath), beem (beam). Exceptions: speche (speech) and
a number of other words have open long e. (29) Regularl
long o is close when it corresponds to thq pronunciation of o
in loo or good: cook, do', loot, to (to, too). Exceptions:
brother, other, moder (mother) have close long o in spite of
ModE pronunciation. (30) Regularly, long o is open when it
corresponds

to the Pronunciation of o in holy:

boo @oat),

goon (so), koom Qnone), o (toe), rood (rode).

Other distncozs. (31) Ou or ow signifies the diphthong of
Sec. 19 when the ModE equivalent has the vowel sound of
ModE know or broughr. Otherwise it signifies long z. (32) The
diphthong eru (Sec. 17) is spelled u in wrds derived from
French and Latin: mute, ilertu. Equivalent ModE words generally maintain the sound. It may thus be distinguished from
short u, so spelled.
CONSONANTS

(33) Pronounced as in ModE except following cass: c

always as in church, never ils in rnachine: royalliche (royally).
(3a) Gg may represent the sound of dg in bridge (bngge), as
well as the sound in dasser (daggre, frogges). (35) Gh after
ci ot i is sounded like ch in German icln: sleighte (sleight'
trick). (36) Gh after a, o, or u is sounded like ch in German
Bach or Scots loch: ynog (enough). (37) Both consonants of
g!, kn, ad wr are sounded at beginning of word or syllable:
gnawe, knight, hnow, (38) Elsewhere gn is sounded as r:
signe. (39) I/ is not (orvery little) sounded at the beginningof
words from French or of short, common words: humble, hs,
hirn, hem (them; cf. colioquial I got oem). (40) Sound I in sucb
words as folk, half.
GRAMMA'

(41) The possessive case of nouns generally ends ln (e)s

much as in ModE, but without apostrophe. (24) The pronoun

is pronounced with a long r, Thou ot ftoa (nominative case)

and thee (objective) are te forms for you, singular; ye (nom.)

and you ot yow (obj.) are the forms-for you, plural' Thou,
thou, you, yow are all pronounced to rhyme with you. Chaucer's form for his and its is fts; his word for their is hir (variously spelled); for rhem, hem, Who is never a relative pronoun; it is interrogative, or it means whoever, as in who (ot

uho so) lweth, he hath peyne and sorwe. For those, Chaucer
uses o.

_ (43) Present tense

INTRODUCTION
indicative of verbs: I loae, thou

xxi
loaest,

he loaeth, we (ye, they) loae(n). The *anslation in this book

does not always reveal whether Chaucer's verb is pasr or
present tense, since he frequently shifts from past to present
and back again (that is, he uses the historicai pr.r"rri *ore
than we do). But the reader can recognize Chaucer,s own alternations in the majority of cases. If, for instance, a verb ends
in_ -eth, it is. present tense (third person singular indicative).
Also, one kind of verb (the so-called weali verbs) in botl
ModE and ME takes the suffix (e)d as a sign of rhe pasr tense;

I
or

past tense indicative:

loaed(e), thou loaedest, he loued,(e), ue

loaeden. Consequently any verb with
tJrese'endings is in the past tense. (In a ferv cases, a verb's
original stem contains these letters, as in bed.e, to ofrer-this
word may have other verbal meanings.) But srong verbs do
n-ot fonl their past tense with tine -(e)d ending; rther, they
change their srem vowels. T'hus, the past tens of taken is
I took, thou toohe, he (she, it) took, ue (ye, they) tooke'(n).
In the case of this and many other strong verbs, however, ihe
speaker of ModE recognizes the form automarically, because
it has survived. Nevertheless a number of past or present forms
of ME strong verbs have not survived: they gonnen (they
began). To distinguish the tense of such unfamiliar srong
verbs you will sometimes need help apart from the translition. Past participles preserve much the same distinction between_ weak and strong; in addition rhey may have the prefix

(ye, they) loued(e)

y-:

have y-loved,,

haue y-tahe(n).

The subjuncrive, which

is

frequent in ME than in ModE, also uses rhe (e)d, sign or

the change in stem vowel to distinguish past from present,'but,
in all persons, its singular ending is e, pl. e(n).
impersonal verb forms rnethinks and meEeems (instead
of-The
I think, or the other impersonal Iorm It sems to lrre) are
sometimes used in IVIodE to give a (not very convincing) archaic flavor. ME uses similar forms frequenily: ,ne thiiieth,
me seemeth, me list (I- want), and the like. Double or triple
negatives are common in ME. Also, the negative sign is ofien
combined with other words: nas (ne was), nes (ne is). Other
such combinations occur: shaltou (shalt thou),' wiltou (wilt
thou), criedestou (criedest thou), and the like.
(44) Certain connectives are sometimes confusing, evea after
consulting the translation. Observe: al wente lze (although or
9":tr.th:rrql he_went); but they comen (unlese they come); lor
(that) he hire lovede (because he love her). That u, .r_
" it
junction introducing adverbial clauses is offen used where
more_

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

'O<ii

would not be appropriate in ModE: the translation

at or eo that will often come close to the neaning.

order

VOCABULARY AND SYNTAX

in form to ME words have

ME sufire, for instance, does not
mern to experience pain, as gufier-tlsually does in lvfodE; it
means to rrIrd..go, endure, or to pr'rrito allow, as in Suffre
thy wyaes tonge or in "Suffer the little children to come unto
(45) Many ModE words related

changed thelr meanings.

me," or in on sufrerance. ME corage does not generally mean

eorrage, but dispoeionn mood, epirits, in the sense tiat one
4ay be well or badly disposed, or in good or bad spiris;.tlese
meanings, like the modern one, center aound the idea "state
of heari," for the word is related to Latin cor (heart). Note
that the change in meaning represents a subtle and compre'
hensible migration, not an arbitrary jump from one meaning
to another. Your reading of Chaucer will be much enriched
(l) if you can locate the center of meaning in ME words as,
io iebt.nt contexts, they extend in one direction or another
to meet a specific need for which we grve an equivalent in the
translation,- and (2) if, in addision, you can see the elation
of meaning to a ModE equivalent.
Generally speaking, ME words are much closer in their
meanings ihu., o*t are to e words from which th-el h3ve
developid or to which they are related by form in other langrr"ges. In many cases the other languages ae Germanic ones,
ut the words for abstactions, generally, come from Latin,
frequently by way of French- Additionally, and naturally, -the
menings of ME'words ae as a rule more closely related -to
the meJnings of ModE words as ese are used in thoughtful
written pro raer than as they are in conversational, casual
,rog", luh"te the words have come to have single, specialized,
blu"ni meanings. This could be easily shown in e case of
sufire and corage.
dePend
l+o fn" lovnes and the force of Chaucer's, verse
easy, colloquial, but very sensitive movement
of is sentenc.t, eutt his viry long ones. But by the standard
of modern written prose, the relationship among cir parte
s often ambiguous,-illogical, and awkwad. The initiai difculty is something like that with a transcriPt of a conversation

in'pat on the

oa u

t_-.

aspect of poetry, and you may miss even that if you read
Chauce as you would a newspaper.
, Our translation should help you in finding your way tbrough
these complexities, because it sticks to the original vocabulary,
arrangement, and semantic relationships as much as we have
been able to arange. Sometimes, however, we have not found a
way of following Chaucer's sentence construction without doing
violence to Modern English. Consider the simple example
of line 208 of "The Franklin's Tale," describing the squire
Auelius's love for Dorigen, Students at first glance think that
this line means "not knowing about this Dorigen at all." It
happens to mean "Dorigen not knowing of tlis at all," and

it

would be usefl to the student

if

tence as "This squire had loved her

we could render the senfor two years and more,

Dorigen not knowing of this at all. . . ." Because, however, we

think that this is awkwad, we have substituted for the construction in question a prepositional phrase: "completely without Dorigen's knowledge." Later in the same sentence the

fall to his
lot." This looks like wilful obscuranrism rather than clarification, but it is not: aaenture is not ModE adventure. As you
will see if you look up the word, its derivation suggests rhe
concept "what comes to one rather than what one bringr
phrase as was his aaenture comes out "as chanced to

about," and one overtone here is that what made the happening come about is not being discussed; it is assumed for present
purposes that the happening came by chance (cf. ModE ad.
venoue, with much the same ultimate derivation). The
squire Aurelius did not ry to fall in love with another man's
wife, but that was what happened to him. This point is important for an understanding of a certain integrity in this
would-be seducer's characte and of Chaucer's feeling about
some manifestations of love. If we used the modern word
adventure, we should be making Chaucer say about Aurelius's
love, "Such was rhe thrilling thing rhat happened to him,"
but this aspect of rhe situation Chaucer is not concerned to
emphasize here.

A similar chain of reasoning is behind each of our departures from Chaucer's vocabulary and sentence structure,
and a little mental agility is somerimes called for to se the
connection.

rra*t conference. To find the meaning often involves tak'

ing the original sentence aPart and reasoning about the mean'
in[fut relaiion of its constituents. Just,getring the .drift will
no-t do. The general drilt is usually tbe mos unimPortant

xxi

VERSIFICATION

All the verse in this book is regularly iambic pentamerer,

the usual five-bear line of English poetry. In ail bui one selection the lines rhyrre in couplets. In 'The prioress' Tale,'
(47)

xxlv

INTRODUCTION

rhymes organize the verse into a seven-line stanza called rime'

royal. To preserve the meter it is important to remember the
rules about pronunciation of final 'e and of such endings as
.ed, -es. But for the sake of his meter Chaucer probably requires us to slur or eliminate many final -e's and to sound
others which would ordinarily be silent. Because we know so
little about the pattern of the spoken sentence in ME' we are
sometimes unsrre of how to scan a grven line' Note the following (a dot under an means that it should be dropped or

slurred): Jtilous/ he wds/ and held/ hre ndr/we. in ctig/,e

(trochee in first foot; exra syllable at end); And md/ken l/
ths ki/mentti/tion (srffixes -los or -ion almost always have

two syllables); Here in/ this trn/ple

/ the

CANTERBURY TALES

gd/desse

Clernnc/e (first .foot trochee; but we do not know whether of

should receive a strong stress. We do not know which syllable
of. goddesse should be stressed. Judging from Chauce's use of
e word elsewhere, it was possible to stress either syllable
lightly. If the word is stressed on its second syllable, the fourth
foot is an anapest; if on the fist, the frfth foot is an anapest;

there is an eitra syllable at te end). /4t/ which bok/ he

logh/ alwy/ ful fst/e (apparently the first foot is simply
, stressed, which requires a little getting used to; extra

'ii

sy'lable at end).

t.1

.1