The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling

Last night, I finished the third tale, and commented that so far these stories aren't much fun. I slept on it, and have decided that this book isn't worth finishing for me. I know Chaucer's collective Canterbury Tales are supposed to be this Big Important Piece of Literature, and perhaps something of the poetry was lost in the translation (I was never gonna read it in old English anyway), but so far I have not been impressed. I have fallen asleep while reading it a few times, and there have been so many flatulence jokes and casual references to the hilariousness of sexual assault that I'm not even interested in any of it anymore.

I loved reading the Canterbury Tales in Middle English in high school, but we only read the Prologue and a few of the tales, given time constraints and the difficulty of the sort-of-different language. I decided to read Ackroyd's modern prose translation as a quicker, easier way to read the rest of the tales. I enjoyed diving back into Chaucer's sarcasm and social commentary (although I was put off by the heavy doses of misogyny and antisemitism in many of the tales). But I found the prose translation disappointing. Part of the joy of Chaucer is the language, and although this felt more casual and less stilted than a modern poetry translation it still match up to the charm of the original.