Book Review: Canterbury Tales

In college, I read the Canterbury Tales in the original middle English. I loved reading them, so I kept the book with the intent of picking it up again. The only problem was that the book weighed about 20 pounds, so it was no light matter to read the book during my commute, and eventually I had to give up.

This went on for some time, and then I recently discovered a small (i.e. 1000+ pages) paperback version with all the helpful glosses and vocabulary help. I was delighted, purchased the book and dove right in.

It accompanied me on my morning commute for quite some time because, well, it's a difficult read. The sentences weave much more freely than in modern English, verbs and nouns don't have their accustomed place, and the spelling is a matter of sound and not convention. Combined with that, some of the vocabulary is long gone. It does make it great value for the money, though; I was probably only spending pennies for each hour of entertainment.

The only real downside was that it began to affect my English. I first noticed that this affect could occur in junior high school when I read a book composed entirely of run-on sentences (it was pretty painful, actually). My writing took a sharp turn, and commas began to replace periods. This was much worse, though; run-on sentences are nothing compared to middle-English influences. The only thing to be said is that at least they're easy to edit out.

I can't say I'd exactly recommend this book, but it is much more fun in the original version. It's just also a lot more work.