The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales
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Narrated by:
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Terry Jones
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By:
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Geoffrey Chaucer
About this listen
Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is one of the most influential pieces of writing in the British literary canon. It helped to establish English, rather than Latin or Norman French, as an acceptable language for literature. It was also one of the earliest pieces of work to have story linking - what had previously been just collected writings which the author deemed interesting.
Following the model of such early masterpieces as Boccacio's Decameron, Chaucer collected several styles and types of stories together - political treatises, bawdy pub stories, courtly romances and moral tales - joining them together under the conceit of a group of pilgrims bound for Canterbury, swapping tales, somewhat competitively, in an inn in Southwark, South London.
The prologue to the tales is therefore an important piece of literature in its own right. Before The Canterbury Tales and its like, it didn’t really matter in what order you read the works collected in one volume; the first item could just as well be read last.
The prologue not only introduces all the characters you are about to meet; it also sets the scene for you, painting a picture of what has become one of the most famous of literary Aprils and linking the forthcoming stories with a series of jousting type attempts by the tellers to top each other and exact revenge for previous insults.
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- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 15 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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If you want to understand the daily life and psychology of the late Middle Ages, Ronald Ecker’s classic translation of The Canterbury Tales provides one of the very best means of doing so. Within its audio is to be found a broad range of society - high and low, male and female, rich and poor - who express their innermost beliefs and extravagant fantasies in a series of stories they tell as they make their way to Canterbury Cathedral.
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The book was better
- By Lana Whited on 08-28-20
By: Geoffrey Chaucer
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The General Prologue and The Physician's Tale
- By: Geoffrey Chaucer
- Narrated by: Richard Bebb, Philip Madoc, Michael Maloney
- Length: 2 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The Canterbury Tales, written near the end of Chaucer's life and hence towards the close of the 14th century, is perhaps the greatest English literary work of the Middle Ages: yet it speaks to us today with almost undimmed clarity and relevance.
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Workmanlike reading in clear Middle English
- By Celia on 09-14-08
By: Geoffrey Chaucer
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The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Keith Moore, Toby Leonard Moore, Colin McPhillamy, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Author Peter Ackroyd has won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Whitbread Novel of the Year, and the Guardian Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Based on Geoffrey Chaucer’s immortal work, this retelling of The Canterbury Tales follows a party of travelers as they tell stories amongst themselves about love and chivalry, saints and legends, travel and adventure. Through allegory, satire, and humor, the tales help pass the time during their journey.
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WOW
- By Mitchell Drimmer on 02-25-15
By: Peter Ackroyd
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The Canterbury Tales
- By: Geoffrey Chaucer
- Narrated by: Jack Wynters
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories, written in the Middle English vernacular, supposedly told among a group of pilgrims traveling from London to Canterbury. Chaucer uses the form, possibly based on knowledge of Boccaccio’s Decameron gained on a visit to Italy in 1373, to provide a highly varied portrait of his society, both secular and religious. The journey of the pilgrims, unlike that of, say, Homer’s Odysseus or of Dante in the Divine Comedy, is relatively unimportant compared to the tales themselves, where Chaucer’s true interest lies.
By: Geoffrey Chaucer
What listeners say about The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Francie
- 10-27-16
In Plain-speak -- There's Only One Terry Jones
There's only one Terry Jones -- and a unique, plain spoken, honorable specimen of weird humanity is he.
Leave it to TJ to reveal to us moderners those now hidden corners, wry twists and turns in Chaucer's Old English narrative as set down by Chaucer himself. The secret is in one's love for language - for promulgating humanity's wagging common tongue.
Terry Jones brings everything he touches to vibrant life -- and at once having defined that suchness he then proceeds to wring the humor and compassion out of each portrait of every man, woman, beast or child. (Not unlike a python. Wink. Wink. Nudge. Nudge.)
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5 people found this helpful
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- Tad Davis
- 09-25-16
A joy
The only problem with Terry Jones' reading of the prologue to the Canterbury Tales is that it leaves you wishing he'd done it all. He reads from his own translation, stopping every once in a while to make an explanatory comment. His joy is infectious: he loves Chaucer and clearly wants everyone else to as well. Whether you've read the Tales before or you're looking for an easy intro, this is a great listen. (Jones DID record the Miller's Tale - that's next on my list.)
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8 people found this helpful