One of the greatest and most ambitious works in English literature, The Canterbury Tales depicts a storytelling competition between pilgrims drawn from all ranks of society.

The tales are as various as the pilgrims themselves, encompassing comedy, pathos, tragedy, and cynicism. The Miller and the Reeve express their mutual antagonism in a pair of comic stories combining sex and trickery; in “The Shipman's Tale,” a wife sells her favors to a monk. Others draw on courtly romance and fantasy: the Knight tells of rivals competing for the love of the same woman, and the Squire describes a princess who can speak to birds. In these twenty-four tales, Chaucer displays a dazzling range of literary styles and conjures up a wonderfully vivid picture of medieval life.

• Freshly established Middle English text with standardized spelling and punctuation and on-page glossing
• Features an introduction, a chronology of Chaucer's life and works, detailed explanatory notes, suggestions for further reading, a full glossary, and a bibliography
• Companion to the Penguin Classics original-spelling edition of Troilus and Criseyde

@AprilFools Oh and the Wyfe of Bathe. Talk about a woman who likes to be perced to the roote.

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Readers of this witty and fluent new translation of The Canterbury Tales should find themselves turning page after page: by recasting Chaucer's ten-syllable couplets into eight-syllable lines, Joseph Glaser achieves a lighter, more rapid cadence than other translators, a four-beat rhythm well-established in the English poetic tradition up to Chaucer's time. Glaser's shortened lines make compelling reading and mirror the elegance and variety of Chaucer's verse to a degree rarely met by translations that copy Chaucer beat for beat. Moreover, this translation's full, Chaucerian range of diction--from earthy to Latinate--conveys the great scope of Chaucer's interests and effects.

The selection features complete translations of the majority of the stories, including all of the more familiar tales and narrative links along with abridgments or summaries of the others. To reflect Chaucer's interest in poetic technique, Glaser presents the tales written in non-couplet stanzas in their original forms.

An Introduction, marginal glosses, bibliography, and notes are also included.

The tragedy of Troilus and Criseyde is one of the greatest narrative poems in English literature. Set during the siege of Troy, it tells how the young knight Troilus, son of King Priam, falls in love with Criseyde, a beautiful widow. Brought together by Criseyde's uncle, Pandarus, the lovers are then forced apart by the events of war, which test their oaths of fidelity and trust to the limits. Described by editor Barry Windeatt as Chaucer's“most ambitious single achievement, his masterpiece,” Troilus and Criseyde is the first work in English to depict human passion with such sympathy and understanding.

• A new, authoritative original-spelling edition with on-page glossing
• Includes introduction, suggestions for further reading, chronology, and explanatory notes
• Appendices include a table comparing Chaucer's poem with its source, Boccacio's Il Filistrato; glossary; and bibliography

@AprilFools Oh and the Wyfe of Bathe. Talk about a woman who likes to be perced to the roote.

From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less