The Canterbury Tales
A collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales (mostly in verse, although some are in prose) are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. In a long list of works, including Troilus and Criseyde, House of Fame, and Parliament of Fowls, The Canterbury Tales was Chaucer's magnum opus. He uses the tales and the descriptions of the characters to paint an ironic and critical portrait of English society at the time, and particularly of the Church. Structurally, the collection bears the influence of The Decameron, which Chaucer is said to have come across during his first diplomatic mission to Italy in 1372. However, Chaucer peoples his tales with 'sondry folk' rather than Boccaccio's fleeing nobles.
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15recommend
78mentions
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2009–2026years
19% recommend81% neutral
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What Hacker News says
- My high school English teachers would not agree with me, but there is a line where “need” becomes “hobby” (short of a career in English Lit).
I have enjoyed reading Canterbury Tales but have little to no ability to parse Beowulf.
I don’t know where that line is, but pre-Shakespeare is at the least diminishing returns.
- Agreed.
We read selections from The Canterbury Tales, in translation, as high school freshman. Our genius history teacher made us promise not to tell our parents, and let us read one of the dirty ones. I was sold.
Later, I learned Middle English, and read the entire Tales. He's brilliant. Reliably funny and engaging (except for one chapter, obviously written in spite after being swindled IRL!).
- The first Hyperion book was great, Canterbury Tales in Space is a great concept and well done. The full series, I think Simmons couldn't really find a good satisfying ending.
- I've noticed the same thing even on airplanes, where everyone is offline. Unfortunately in that case almost everything is either sleeping, consuming corporate entertainment, or reading books.
BUT there are always a few people who are open to talking. I prefer talking to being on the phone when I'm in flight. I get to have a long conversation about 1/4 of flights.
If you read old books like Pilgrim's Progress you see people walking towards the same town together, and they always struck up a conversation. Look at the Canterbury Tales: some really great literature that consists just of fellow travelers having a storytelling contest! We are missing so much humanity in our kosher lives.
- > Relationships are key to our survival, so I suggest personal relations could be just as good an essay as anything scientific
Some of my favorite books are old literature that describe relationship dynamics I still see playing out between people today. Swann’s Way, The Brothers Karamazov, even Canterbury Tales…
I think it was Vonnegut that wrote that the best books are the ones that tell you what you already know [but maybe you didn’t know you knew till you read it]. That’s something like surprise, and yet something like the opposite.
- Multiple re-reads:
- Saga of the Exiles by Julian May, which merges science fiction with folklore/fantasy in Pliocene Earth
- Hyperion by Dan Simmons, excellent SF with a feel of the Canterbury Tales about it
- Neuromancer by William Gibson, plus the follow-ups (all the Sprawl) are very good too
- The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner, about the eco collapse of the US in the 1980s (10 years after it was written) and which William Gibson called a "brilliant novel"
And a couple of guilty pleasures:
- Venus Equilateral by George O Smith, 1940s stories based around a three mile long space station at the L4 point in space, a bit like Babylon 5 meets DS9 in the era of vacuum tubes
- Necrotech by KC Alexander, a brutal and obscene body-mod cyberpunk dystopia (the sequel of which, Nanoshock, has a superbly offensive opening sentence)
- Halcyon Drift by Brian Stableford, about a corporate dystopia and a pilot who hooks up his body to merge with his ship (a bit blase now but less so then, especially as I had read far less at the time)
- Bio of a Space Tyrant by Piers Anthony, a 6 book series following the rise of a refugee to becoming the Tyrant of Jupiter
