Hi friends and happy Monday! I hope you’re all doing well. I’m back with another classic read! Today I’m posting my reading update thoughts on Canterbury Tales by: Geoffrey Chaucer.

The procession that crosses Chaucer’s pages is as full of life and as richly textured as a medieval tapestry. The Knight, the Miller, the Friar, the Squire, the Prioress, the Wife of Bath, and others who make up the cast of characters — including Chaucer himself — are real people, with human emotions and weaknesses. When it is remembered that Chaucer wrote in English at a time when Latin was the standard literary language across western Europe, the magnitude of his achievement is even more remarkable. But Chaucer’s genius needs no historical introduction; it bursts forth from every page of The Canterbury Tales.

If we trust the General Prologue, Chaucer intended that each pilgrim should tell two tales on the way to Canterbury and two tales on the way back. He never finished his enormous project and even the completed tales were not finally revised. Scholars are uncertain about the order of the tales. As the printing press had yet to be invented when Chaucer wrote his works, The Canterbury Tales has been passed down in several handwritten manuscripts.

Goodreads synopsis

I think this is my most daunting classic read yet. I knew going in, it wasn’t going to be easy… but I guess I thought it’d be easier than the time I’m having. I’ve read 3 tales out of the 25 so far. I feel like this book is going to cause me to hate reading. Picking it up is not fun, but I also want to give it a chance since I know it’s something I have to get used to. I’m starting to find a bit of a flow… but I’m still paying too much attention to the individual words and not to the actual story being told so I’m always confused. Like I say, I’m hoping this changes with more exposure, but we shall see. 

I’m now 6 tales in and well, it’s still an uphill battle. I will admit that reading the words has gotten slightly easier, but understanding that there is an actual story being told is still a struggle for me. I’m not ready to give up yet… even though it’s really tempting. I’m going to push through to see if I can actually start to understand it. Like the story I finished reading today, I think it’s about a daughter who is reunited with her father. Okay, after a quick Google search I realized I understood the end of the story, because the daughter of a Christian Emperor does come back after she married a Syrian sultan who’s evil mother has all the Christian’s killed and the daughter managed to survive. I’m proud I got the ending, that’s progress! 

I’m a little behind on my updates on the Canterbury Tales, but I am still reading it. In the last few weeks, I think I’ve finally found a rhythm and it’s easier to read the words… getting the actual stories is still a struggle, but I’m finding I am retaining more than when I first started, so progress. I’m now 10 tales in and still a little shy from the halfway mark, but I have more faith in myself about completing this book now. The tales have been interesting, not exactly my cup of tea (even though I still have to look up what I read – which I find helpful because I’ll read something on Google and go, oh yes this makes sense to what I read, so comprehension is working 😂), but the tales are sorta strange in a very Middle English kinda way I guess you could say.

I’m officially past the halfway mark and that makes me happy! I’m also not hating this as much as I did when I first started. I’m now 17 tales in, I have 7 more to go, which boggles my brain how I got here, but I can say with confidence I’m going to finish this. Like I said in my last update, I’ve definitely found a rhythm to reading this and it’s not as daunting as when I started. I’m starting to be able to really read the stories, my comprehension of them is still iffy, but I think that’s how it’s going to be with this until the end. Some of the stories I like more than others (some I understand more, too), but I’m curious what happens, if anything once the last tale is told. 

This is going to be a brief update this week since I haven’t made much progress.The reason for that is I’ve hit a tale that was told in prose, rather than in the poetry/stanza format the rest of the tales are told in and it was a bit of a doozy – it took me 4 days to read. And even after googling the synopsis I went, I missed a lot. The one thing I did agree on, was that it was a long debate. The debate was apparently on what Melibee and his wife should do after thieves break into their house and beat their daughter to death. It’s rather tragic, but I never read it as such, probably because I didn’t catch that part… too much debating. 😅 I’m now 19 tales in, with 6 more to go, I’m hoping next week will bring further progress.

I’m so close to the end, with one last tale left, I hope to have one more update after this… we shall see as it’s a long tale. But before that, this week I managed to get through 5 tales, that’s pretty impressive (yes I’m proud of myself! 😂) I finally read the Nun’s Priest Tale, one I think is probably the most popular, although I personally don’t get why. I found that one harder to grasp. When I looked up why it’s so popular Google said it was for its literary style and maybe that’s why I struggled with it. The tale I read today, the Manciple’s Tale was very metaphorical, which had me looking up what I read. Like I understood the words, but having to realize the cat and bird symbolized more was hard to grasp in Middle English. Here’s to one last tale!

The day is finally here! I have made it through the entirety of the Canterbury Tales! I will be honest, I didn’t think I’d make it; there were moments I wanted to give up because it was such a struggle, but I’m glad I made it through. That to say though, I don’t think I can rate this higher than a 2 star because as much as my reading comprehension got better, it didn’t get to the point where I understood the stories or the overall arc of their travels to Canterbury. I like that I read it in its original Middle English, but if a modern day retelling existed (or exists) I’d be interested in reading that to fully grasp what I missed here. Because I felt like I was constantly looking things up, it made the content drag and just feel ok to me, especially this last tale that I read The Parson’s Tale. That was a long tale where it just talked about The Seven Deadly Sins in great detail and the dos and donts of living a good life for your soul; it came off preachy, although I will give it the benefit of being written in the 1400s, so it was definitely a lot more accepting and renowned then. I will admit some of it was interesting, but most of it was just kind of whatever to me. In the end, I’m glad I read this, but I don’t see myself ever rereading it again. One experience was good enough. 

 Have you read the Canterbury Tales? Let me know in the comments!