Canterbury Tales (Broadview Edition)

The Broadview Canterbury Tales is a new edition of the complete tales in a text based on the famous Ellesmere Manuscript. Here one may read a Middle English text that is closer to what Chaucer's scribe, Adam Pinkurst, actually wrote than that in any other modern edition. Unlike most editions, which draw on a number of manuscripts to recapture Chaucer's original intention, this edition preserves the text as it was found in one influential manuscript. Spellings have not been standardized, the order of the lines and passages has not been altered, the text has only been emended when absolutely necessary for sense, and the original marginal glosses are noted throughout.

The edition includes English glosses on the side of the page, and the introduction and notes address aspects of medieval culture, history, and language that may need explanation. A sampling of illustrations from the original manuscript is also included, along with a selection of other works that give the reader a rich sense of the cultural, political, and literary worlds in which Chaucer lived.

Publishers Weekly

Like Charles Lamb's edition of Shakespeare, Hastings's loose prose translation of seven of Chaucer's tales is more faithful to the work's plot than to the poet's language. This is not a prudish retelling (even the bawdy Miller's tale is included here) but the vigor of Chaucer's text is considerably tamed. In the original, the pilgrims possess unique voices, but here the tone is uniformly bookish. The colloquial speech of the storyteller is replaced by formal prose; for example, while Cohen (see review above) directly translates Chaucer's ``domb as a stoon'' as ``silent as stones,'' Hastings writes ``in solemn silence.'' Cartwright's startling paintings skillfully suggest the stylized flatness of a medieval canvas, but often without the accompanying richness of detail. Like Punch and Judy puppets, the faces and voices of these pilgrims are generally representative but lack the life and charm of the original text. Ages 10-up. (Oct.)

Robert Boenig is Professor of English at Texas A&M University.

Andrew Taylor is Associate Professor of English at the University of Ottawa.