canterbury tales – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

The Canterbury Tales: A New Unabridged Translation

By Scott J. Pearson | September 19, 2019October 11, 2019 by Scott J. Pearson

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is a classic that most high schoolers read excerpts from in high school. Burton Raffel here offers a new, full-length translation. The translation mostly succeeds (at least in oral format) as it conveys the sense of the work fairly well. While reading, it struck me how essentially medieval Chaucer’s setting is. While he is often talked about as one standing at the cusp of an enlightened England, his roots are thoroughly planted…

Review: Chaucer

By Scott J. Pearson | August 1, 2019August 1, 2019 by Scott J. Pearson

Author of the Canterbury Tales (among other works), Geoffrey Chaucer is a pioneer of the English language from the late middle ages. He is eclipsed in his innovations perhaps only by William Shakespeare. Peter Ackroyd is a modern British historian and a worthy biographer of this giant. In this accessible series (read: short books), Ackroyd provides us with a great summary of what there is to know about Chaucer from historical records. Chaucer was not…