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Written by Geoffrey Chaucer - Audio book performed by Richard Bebb - Unabridged Fiction - 2 COMPACT DISCS - 2 hours, 38 minutes

Publisher, Naxos Audiobooks (February 2007)

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These three tales from The Canterbury Tales are read in the original Middle English by Richard Bebb under the direction of Britain's foremost Chaucer scholar, Derek Brewer. The tales and their story-tellers display extraordinary variety and come from different sections of The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer's portrait of the Pardoner himself, laced with hostile satire, is as entertaining and revealing as the Tale itself – a search for a pot of gold during the plague. The Nonne Preestes Tale is the well-known folk story of the fox and the cock, Chanticleer. The Frankeleyns Tale is different again and concerns faithfulness, love and magic. They are presented here in the original Middle English, but with the sense of drama and storytelling intact.

About the Author: c.1345–1400 - Geoffrey Chaucer was born in or about 1345, and was the son of John Chaucer, a vintner and tavern-keeper in London, perhaps the John Chaucer who was deputy to the king’s butler. It is possible he may have gone to Oxford or to Cambridge; certainly, in 1357 and 1358 he was a page in the service of the wife of Lionel, Duke of Clarence; whence he would seem to have been presently transferred to the king’s household. In 1359 he served in the campaign in France, and was taken prisoner at ‘Retters’ (Rethel), but was soon ransomed, the king contributing £16 towards the required amount. He returned home in 1360. In 1367 the king granted him a pension. He is described as ‘our beloved yeoman’, and as ‘one of the yeomen of the king’s chamber’, and in 1368 is one of the king’s esquires. In 1368 one Philippa Chaucer appears amongst the ladies of the queen’s bed-chamber, and there is no good reason for doubting that this is the poet’s wife. She seems to have had two sons and a daughter. Some have thought Chaucer’s married life was disturbed and unhappy. In the year 1369 Chaucer comes certainly before us as a poet, with his Death of Blanche the Duchess (wife of John of Gaunt), in many ways a crude composition. In 1370 he went abroad on the king’s service; in 1372–73 on a royal mission to Genoa, Pisa and Florence; in 1376 abroad, it is not known where; in 1377 to Flanders and to France; in 1378, to Italy again. Meanwhile in 1874 he was appointed Comptroller of the Customs and Subsidy of Wools, Skins and Tanned Hides in the port of London; in 1382 Comptroller of the Petty Customs; and in 1385 he was allowed to nominate a permanent deputy. In 1374 the king granted him a pitcher of wine daily; and John of Gaunt conferred on him a pension of £10 for life. In 1375 he received from the crown the custody of lands that brought him in £104. In 1386 he was elected a knight of the shire for Kent. The following writings certainly belong to the period 1369–87; The Assembley of Fowls, The House of Fame, Troilus and Cressida, and The Legend of Good Women; also what ultimately appeared as the ‘Clerk’s’, ‘Man of Law’s’, ‘Prioress’s’, ‘Second Nun’s’, and ‘Knight’s Tales’ in the Canterbury Tales.

By far the most important influence acting upon him during this middle period of his literary life was the influence of Italy. Dante profoundly impressed him, and he appreciated worthily the works of Petrarch and Boccaccio. Much of his subject matter he derived from his great Italian contemporaries, especially from Boccaccio; and the influence of the Italian poets recreated him as an artist, giving him a new and loftier conception of artistic form and beauty. What he did was to imitate not the letter but the spirit of his Italian masters. In the heroic heptastich, and presently in the heroic couplet, he found metrical forms that satisfied the highest ideal. The crowning work of the middle period of his life is certainly Troilus and Cressida – a work in which the abundant wealth of his genius is lavishly displayed. The prologue to the Legend of Good Women is an admirable piece of writing; but the theme was soon felt to be wearisomely monotonous, and was abandoned. His next great subject was the Canterbury Pilgrimage. But about the end of 1386 he apparently resigned his places in the civil service; and from this time to very nearly the end of his life things went ill with him. Possibly he was involved in court intrigues; possibly there was also some dissatisfaction with his official work. In 1389 he was appointed Clerk of the King’s Works, but two years later we find him superseded. What glimpses we have of him in the succeeding years show him in perpetual impecuniosity and distress. Thrift was not one of his virtues. No sort of provision seems to have been made against a ‘rainy day;’ and now came many rainy days. In 1394 King Richard granted him a pension of £20 for life; but the advances of payment he applies for and the issue of letters of protection from arrest for debt indicate his condition. An improvement came with the accession to the throne of the son of his old patron John of Gaunt. In 1399 King Henry IV ‘granted him a pension of £26. 13s. 4d. And we may believe his few remaining months were spent in comfort. He seems to have died on the 25 October 1400, and was laid in that part of Westminster Abbey which through his burial there came afterwards to be known as Poet’s Corner. In spite of all his reverses and troubles, it was during this last period of his life that Chaucer’s genius shone brightest. The design of the Canterbury Tales was indeed too huge for completion; and no doubt for all his vigour and buoyancy his troubles interfered with his progress. His work remains but a fragment, but it is a fragment of large and splendid dimensions, consisting of parts that are admirably finished wholes. His greatest achievement is the Prologue (1387) to the Tales, which for its variety, humour, grace, reality and comprehensiveness is, as a piece of descriptive writing, unique in all literature. Chaucer is in order of time the first great poet of the English race; and in the order of merit he is amongst the first of all our poets. In the middle ages in England he stands supreme, with neither equal, nor second.