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Sunday, June 7, 2009
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- Buford Ape
- Buford Ape grew up between a cow pasture and a corn field in West Central Georgia. He is a lifelong nerd who has studied English, Drama, and Spanish at 5 different colleges.
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19 comments:
Sorry to say but I hate poems I can never understand what they are trying to say. I am going to have to reread this like a million times before I can make a decent post
Do you rhyming version in modern English? It should not be that difficult -- especially when you get out of the "Prologue" and into the actual "Tales."
Penguin Edition is the best.
Another thing -- read this like a collection of stories. "Prologue" is the introduction; "Tales" are individual stories.
Thankfully, I read these comments before I got too far into the book because, at first, Chaucer's eccentric structure was difficult for me to follow. However, once I got into the individual stories, I started appriciating his style because I had time to acclimate to his unusual juxtaposition of the many contrasting stories. To conclude, after I finished the overwhelming beginning, the Prologue, I ended up really enjoying the book.
I have the penguin edition, and I still couldnt get through the, yes very overwhelming prologue. I have saved that task for last.
Is it me or are these poems dirty? I've only read a couple and I swear there were dirty things in it. Maybe its just my dirty mind...
Fart jokes have been making people laugh (or cringe) for centuries!
To be honest I was really not looking forward to having to read this book, but I was pleasantly surprised. The prologue did take a while to get through, but the actual tales were quite humorous. I even found myself laughing out loud a couple of times while reading the miller's tale! The fact that every line in this book contains so many literary devices and sheer beauty in the words amazes me. I really enjoyed this book. Chaucer has given me a new outlook on poetry.
Im really not a big fan of poetry, however the "Prologue" was entertaining. My favorite was The Knight's Tale, I liked the way the poem caught my attention.
Well, this book was a pleasant shock to me, as to how i hate both poems and long narratives. The individual books have their own little "fun" to them, as well as all the overwhelming imagery. The stories were a faster read than I thought they would be. Some were interesting to read, such (as Taylor suggested) the Miller's Tale. I really enjoyed that one the most. Overall, I enjoyed reading the book, and it would be somewhere near the middle portion of my favorite sections.
This was my least favorite to read of the three assignments but it still wasn't that bad. All the stories had a moral or theme of some sort. Some of them had funny parts, but I didn't find them hilarious like the little notes at the back said they were.
So here's a conversation between me and my grandfather:
Papa: Is that for your English class? What book is it?
Me: Canterbury Tales.
Papa: Canterbury Tales? Raunchy!
and indeed it was.But that's what set it apart from all of the other assignments- when I think of British Literature, I think of prim and proper, and most of the humor (humour?) is a dry wit. The Canterbury Tales reminded me that even the British can joke about sex and flatulence.
You said to take notes on each section, as they do not necessarily go together. I found this interesting, as the tales themselves are independent, and it's the people who interact. Could Chaucer possibly be putting emphasis on the characters, as a form of social commentary, and the tales are just vessels used to display each person's personality?
The Canterbury Tales is one of the few surviving literary works from the Middle Ages, so you could definitely consider it a sociological work.
I agree with Rachel that the topics throughout the different tales were suprising. When you think of British liturature you think really proper and boring, but the tales where actually interesting and enjoyable to read. Also, even though the book was written back in the Middle Ages it had messages that still pertain to life in today's world.
Of the three books we were assigned this summer, this was the one book I had to continuously re-read certain parts to understand the tales. Overall, I found the tales to be fairly humorous, but not laugh out loud hilarious. Chaucer has a unique talent of using language in a brilliant way!
I had trouble reading this book as well. For some reason I kept getting distracted by the fact that they were poems and was putting to much on reading it as such. After about the end of the prologue I managed to get out of that mindset. I do agree with those that posted before me that it was surprisingly dirty. I didn't really go into reading it thinking that some of the stories were going to be as vulgar as they were.
Not a bad collection of tales... I bought a copy that had side by side old english and a rhyming modern english and it was really interesting to compare the spellings and how things changed over the years.... attempted to memorize the old english but i didn't know how to say half the words and didn't want to look stupid when i got up there and pronounced "droghte" "gra-guh-tee." Alas, had to settle for modern english. :-)
The Reeve's Tale was my favorite. I agree some of the poems sound dirty. Haha. I took your advice Mr. Harris to read each of the separate poems as stories. That helped a lot.
I must say that when first picking up the book I believed that I wouldn't like what seemed to be never ending lines marching on towards infinity; as I read more and more I seemed to enjoy Chaucer's outlook and writing style with each following sentence. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and most of the additional accounts I read.
Justin Gee
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