The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (English) Paperback Book

Description: The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, Geraldine McCaughrean A lively, humorous retelling for children of Geoffrey Chaucers Canterbury Tales, by award-winning author Geraldine McCaughrean. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description A lively, humorous retelling for children of Geoffrey Chaucers Canterbury Tales, by award-winning author Geraldine McCaughrean. Notes Lively retelling by Geraldine McCaughrean. Author Biography Geoffrey Chaucer (Author)Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London in about 1342, and is known as the father of English Literature. He rose in royal employment to become a knight of the shire for Kent and a justice of the peace, and was well-read in several languages and on many topics, such as astronomy, medicine, physics and alchemy. His works include The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde and The Parliament of Fowles. He died in 1400 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.Geraldine McCaughrean (Author, Re-Teller)Born and educated in Enfield, North London, Geraldine McCaughrean is the youngest of three children. She worked at a London publishing house for ten years, and now works from home, in Berkshire. She has written around a hundred and sixty books, mostly for children. She has won numerous awards, including the Whitbread Book of the Year Childrens Novel Award, The Guardian Prize, and the Carnegie Medal. Review "A delight . . . [Raffels translation] provides more opportunities to savor the counterpoint of Chaucers earthy humor against passages of piercingly beautiful lyric poetry."—Kirkus Reviews"Masterly . . . This new translation beckons us to make our own pilgrimage back to the very wellsprings of literature in our language." —Billy Collins"The Canterbury Tales has remained popular for seven centuries. It is the most approachable masterpiece of the medieval world, and Mr. Raffels translation makes the stories even more inviting."—Wall Street Journal Review Quote "A delight . . . [Raffels translation] provides more opportunities to savor the counterpoint of Chaucers earthy humor against passages of piercingly beautiful lyric poetry."- Kirkus Reviews "Masterly . . . This new translation beckons us to make our own pilgrimage back to the very wellsprings of literature in our language." -Billy Collins " The Canterbury Tales has remained popular for seven centuries. It is the most approachable masterpiece of the medieval world, and Mr. Raffels translation makes the stories even more inviting." -Wall Street Journal Excerpt from Book The Knights Tale 1 Introduction 1 The Knights Tale, which mostly takes place in ancient Athens, is the conflicted love story of two royal Theban cousins who love the same woman. Because "The Knights Tale" is by far the longest and most complex of the Canterbury Tales presented in this volume, a quick summary of the action of the four parts of the tale may help readers encountering it for the first time: Part I. On his way back to Athens with his bride, Hypolita, and his sister-in-law, Emily, Duke Theseus responds to the pleas of some grieving widows by defeating Creon, the tyrant of Thebes. Among the bodies of the defeated army, he finds near death the royal cousins Palamon and Arcite. Rather than kill them, Theseus takes them back to Athens and places them in prison. From their barred prison window, the two young men see the lovely Emily and both fall in love with her. Arcite after a time is released but banished from Athens on pain of death, while Palamon remains in prison. The two are envious of each others condition. Part II. Arcite disguises himself as a common laborer and comes back to Athens, where he gets a job working in Emilys household. Meanwhile, Palamon escapes from prison, and the rival cousins chance to meet in a grove near Athens. While Palamon and Arcite are fighting a bloody duel, Theseus, Hypolita, and Emily, out hunting, by chance come upon them in a grove. At first angry, Theseus soon relents, sets both of his enemies free, and invites them to return in a year, each with a hundred knights, to take part in a glorious tournament, with Emilys hand going to the winner. Part III. Theseus builds a splendid amphitheater in preparation for the tournament and places on its west, east, and north borders elaborately decorated temples to Mars, Venus, and Diana. When the two troops of warriors come back for the tournament, the three principals each pray to one of the planetary deities. Palamon prays to Venus, not for victory but for the hand of Emily. Emily prays to Diana to be spared marriage to either Palamon or Arcite, praying instead to remain a maiden always. Arcite prays to Mars for victory in the tournament. Part IV. Just before the tournament begins Theseus declares that he wants no lives to be lost and restricts the kinds of weapons that may be used. He sets out the rules of the game, the primary one being that the winning side will be the one that takes the loser to a stake at the end of the field. After vigorous fighting, Arcites men drag the wounded Palamon to the stake. No sooner is Arcite declared the winner than Saturn commands Pluto, god of the underworld, to send a diabolical fury to frighten Arcites horse. Arcite is thrown and crushed by his own saddle bow. After an elaborate funeral and the passage of some years, Theseus tells Palamon and Emily to marry, and they happily do so. Arching over the story of the warriors and lovers down on the earth below is a heavenly conflict among the gods or, more precisely, among the planetary or astrological influences that were thought to control the affairs of men. Indeed, a key feature of "The Knights Tale" is the prayers of the three principal characters to these influences. Closely tied up with the question of whether Palamon or Arcite will get the young woman they both love is the question of how the powerful Saturn will settle the conflicting demands on him of Mars, Venus, and Diana. Chaucers main source for "The Knights Tale" is Giovanni Boccaccios several-hundred-page-long Teseida. Readers who are upset at having to read Chaucers long and leisurely story of Palamon, Arcite, and Emily should thank Chaucer for streamlining a story that is less than a quarter the length of Boccaccios Italian story of Palemone, Arcita, and Emilia. Chaucer reduced the story in lots of ways, particularly by staying focused on the love story. He cut out, for example, Boccaccios long opening description of Theseuss journey to the land of the Amazons, his defeat of them, and his acquiring as his bride the Amazonian queen Hypolita. But Chaucer did more than reduce the Teseida, which focuses on Arcite as the main character, who in Boccaccio is almost a tragic figure who makes the mistake of praying to the wrong deity. For Chaucer, Palamon is raised to equal importance, if not more importance, than his rival. And Chaucer transforms the vain and coquettish Emilia of his source into a more innocent object of the love of rival cousins. One of Chaucers most important changes was to give the story a philosophical overlay by introducing into it the ideas of the ancient philosopher Boethius. One of Boethiuss key ideas was that there is a great God who designs a far better plan for human beings than they could possibly design for themselves. That design sometimes involves what looks like adversity, but the adversity is always (for Boethius) part of a design that leads to happiness. We should then, according to Boethius, not resist or fight against the troubles that come our way, but cheerfully accept them, trusting that in the end things will work out for the best. The ending of "The Knights Tale," then, reflects this reassuring philosophy by showing that although the three principal characters all seem at first not to get what they want most, in the end all of them do get what they want, or perhaps something even better. For this and the other tales in this volume, readers should reread the portrait of the teller given by Chaucer in the General Prologue. The portrait of the Knight (lines 43-78) shows him to be the idealized Christian soldier who fought with valor and honor at most of the important late-fourteenth-century battles against heathens. We know less of his marital than of his martial life, but he does have a son who is with him on this pilgrimage. The Knight seems, all in all, an ideal teller for the long tale of war, romance, honor, and philosophy that Chaucer assigns to him. Notes Part I Femenye (line 8). A race of warlike women, led by Hypolita, who decided that they could live and protect themselves without the help of men. They are sometimes called Amazons, their land Scithia. Saturne, Juno (470-71). Two forces that Palamon blames for the setbacks that Thebes has suffered. Saturn is the powerful planet. Juno is the jealous wife of Jupiter, who had made love to two Theban women. Part II Hereos (516). Eros, a sickness associated with the intense emotion of falling in love. manye (516). A kind of melancholy madness or mania brought on by the frustration of his love for an inaccessible woman. Argus (532). In classical mythology, the jealous Juno had set the hundred-eyed Argus as guard to Io, who was a lover of her husband, Jupiter. Argus was killed by Mercury (see line 527), who first sang all of Arguss hundred eyes to sleep. Cadme and Amphioun (688). Cadmus and Amphion are the legendary founders of the city of Thebes, home to Palamon and Arcite. regne of Trace (780). The reference in this and the next lines is to the Thracian kingdom in which a hunter prepares himself at a mountain pass to meet a charging lion or bear. Part III Citheroun (1078). Venuss supposed mountainous island of Cytherea, though Chaucer may have confused the name with the name of a different location. Ydelnesse, Salamon, Hercules, Medea, Circes, Turnus, Cresus (1082-88). Various literary, historical, and classical allusions, most of them demonstrating the follies and miseries associated with the snares of love. qualm (1156). Probably a reference to the "pestilence" or bubonic plague that killed millions in Europe during Chaucers lifetime. See also line 1611 below, where Saturn claims to have the power to send the plague. The reference to the bubonic plague here is anachronistic, since "The Knights Tale" is set in the classical pre-Christian era. Julius, Nero, Antonius (1173-74). Three famous rulers slaughtered in time of war--exemplary of the mayhem and death caused by mighty Mars. The last is Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Caracalla, a Roman emperor murdered in AD 217. Puella, Rubeus (1187). Two astrological references to Mars as cast by a complicated process called geomancy, a pseudoscience involving dots and lines. Calistopee, Dane, Attheon, Atthalante, Meleagre (1198- 1213). Various classical and legendary allusions to hunters or the hunted whose unfortunate tales are depicted on the walls of the temple of Diana, goddess of the hunt. griffon (1275). A griffin was in Greek mythology a fearsome beast with the head and wings of an eagle on the body of a lion. in hir houre (1359). Palamon picks his hour of prayer carefully. The various planets were supposed to have special powers on certain hours of the day, hours in which it was particularly propitious to make prayers for their astrological influence. Venus would have had special strength on the twenty-third hour of Sunday night (see line 1351), when it was not yet two hours before dawn on Monday morning (line 1352). the thridde houre inequal (1413). The medieval astrological day was divided into twenty-four "inequal" or planetary hours. In this system the time between dawn and dusk was divided equally into twelve hours, the time between dusk and the following dawn into twelve more. Except at the two equinoxes, when the daylight hours would have been exactly equal in length to the nighttime hours (that is, sixty minutes), the daylight hours would have been longer or shorter than the hours of darkness, depending on the time of the year--thus the inequality. Emily prays to Diana Details ISBN0140380531 Author Geraldine McCaughrean Short Title CANTERBURY TALES Series Puffin Classics (Paperback) Language English ISBN-10 0140380531 ISBN-13 9780140380538 Media Book Format Paperback Year 1997 Imprint Puffin Classics Place of Publication London Country of Publication United Kingdom Death 1400 Residence ENK Narrator Geraldine Mccaughrean Translated from English Birth 1400 DOI 10.1604/9780140380538 Abridged Yes UK Release Date 1997-01-30 Pages 128 Audience Age 9-11 Publisher Penguin Random House Childrens UK Publication Date 1997-01-30 Alternative 9780141366715 DEWEY 823.914 Audience Children / Juvenile NZ Release Date 1997-01-29 AU Release Date 1997-01-29 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:631458;

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