Written in the baker's dozen years that came at the end of the fifteenth century, Canterbury Tales was Chaucer's unfinished epic the has long outlived him. Unfinished (it's rumored to have been planned as several tales each form some thirty travelers - but it ended up with only about a third of that before he died), it is widely viewed as his greatest work. If this is the greatest, I fele sorry for the rest of his output, because to me this was boring and tedious nonsense.
The tales are as follows. I made it only to The Miller's tale, and then I skipped to the last one which was the most tedious of all, before giving up on this!
- The Knight's Tale - a chivalric romance ripped off from Giovanni Boccaccio.
- The Miller's Tale - the rape of the Miller's wife.
- The Reeve's Tale - the continued rape of the Miller's wife.
- The Cook's Tale - cooking up another story.
- The Man of Law's Tale - a rip-off of John Gower's Tale of Constance which is anti-Islam propaganda.
- The Wife of Bath's Tale - Another tale of rape.
- The Friar's Tale - More advantage taken of women.
- The Summoner's Tale - a gross tale.
- The Clerk's Tale - The evil bastard Marquis of Saluzzo employs appalling and unforgivable cruelty to his wife.
- The Merchant's Tale - Another tale insisting that women are fundamentally evil.
- The Squire's Tale - a rambling, meaningless story.
- The Franklin's Tale - a woman is once more a possession.
- The Physician's Tale - a rip-off of a story by the Roman historian Livy wherein a girl is a possession again.
- The Pardoner's Tale - age old tale of three men and death.
- The Shipman's Tale - deceitful woman.
- The Prioress's Tale - a racist story about 'Jewes'.
- Sir Thopas' Tale - a story of a man's designs upon a woman.
- The Tale of Melibee - an insane debate on what should be the retribution for two men who broke in and badly beat his wife and daughter.
- The Monk's Tale - a collection of tragic stroies about historical figures. Yawn.
- The Nun's Priest's Tale - more rambling.
- The Second Nun's Tale - rambling about faith.
- The Canon's Yeoman's Tale - whining.
- The Manciple's Tale - untrustorthy women - again.
- The Parson's Tale - painful penitence.
Based on what little I could stand to listen to, I can't commend this as a worthy read at all. It's warty. It's one of the, if not the most disgusting, puerile and ridiculous collections I've ever encoutnered. It's a disgrace and not worh a minute of my time, much less what time I did spend on it.
