Canterbury Tales and Other Poems | Page 4

by
D. Laing Purves




CONTENTS
PREFACE?LIFE OF CHAUCER?THE CANTERBURY TALES
The General Prologue?The Knight's Tale?The Miller's tale?The Reeve's Tale?The Cook's Tale?The Man of Law's Tale?The Wife of Bath's Tale?The Friar's Tale?The Sompnour's Tale?The Clerk's Tale?The Merchant's Tale?The Squire's Tale?The Franklin's Tale?The Doctor's Tale?The Pardoner's Tale?The Shipman's Tale?The Prioress's Tale?Chaucer's Tale of Sir Thopas?Chaucer's Tale of Meliboeus?The Monk's Tale?The Nun's Priest's Tale?The Second Nun's Tale?The Canon's Yeoman's Tale?The Manciple's Tale?The Parson's Tale?Preces de Chauceres?THE COURT OF LOVE <1>?THE CUCKOO AND THE NIGHTINGALE <1>?THE ASSEMBLY OF FOWLS?THE FLOWER AND THE LEAF <1>?THE HOUSE OF FAME?TROILUS AND CRESSIDA?CHAUCER'S DREAM <1>?THE PROLOGUE TO THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN?CHAUCER'S A.B.C.?MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
Transcriber's Note.
1. Modern scholars believe that Chaucer was not the author of these poems.
PREFACE.
THE object of this volume is to place before the general reader our two early poetic masterpieces -- The Canterbury Tales and The Faerie Queen; to do so in a way that will render their?"popular perusal" easy in a time of little leisure and unbounded temptations to intellectual languor; and, on the same conditions, to present a liberal and fairly representative selection from the less important and familiar poems of Chaucer and Spenser.?There is, it may be said at the outset, peculiar advantage and propriety in placing the two poets side by side in the manner now attempted for the first time. Although two centuries divide them, yet Spenser is the direct and really the immediate?successor to the poetical inheritance of Chaucer. Those two hundred years, eventful as they were, produced no poet at all worthy to take up the mantle that fell from Chaucer's shoulders; and Spenser does not need his affected archaisms, nor his?frequent and reverent appeals to "Dan Geffrey," to vindicate for himself a place very close to his great predecessor in the literary history of England. If Chaucer is the "Well of English?undefiled," Spenser is the broad and stately river that yet holds the tenure of its very life from the fountain far away in other and ruder scenes.
The Canterbury Tales, so far as they are in verse, have been printed without any abridgement or designed change in the?sense. But the two Tales in prose -- Chaucer's Tale of?Meliboeus, and the Parson's long Sermon on Penitence -- have been contracted, so as to exclude thirty pages of unattractive prose, and to admit the same amount of interesting and?characteristic poetry. The gaps thus made in the prose Tales, however, are supplied by careful outlines of the omitted matter, so that the reader need be at no loss to comprehend the whole scope and sequence of the original. With The Faerie Queen a bolder course has been pursued. The great obstacle to the?popularity of Spencer's splendid work has lain less in its?language than in its length. If we add together the three great poems of antiquity -- the twenty-four books of the Iliad, the twenty-four books of the Odyssey, and the twelve books of the Aeneid -- we get at the dimensions of only one-half of The?Faerie Queen. The six books, and the fragment of a seventh, which alone exist of the author's contemplated twelve, number about 35,000 verses; the sixty books of Homer and Virgil?number no more than 37,000. The mere bulk of the poem, then, has opposed a formidable barrier to its popularity; to say?nothing of the distracting effect produced by the numberless episodes, the tedious narrations, and the constant repetitions, which have largely swelled that bulk. In this volume the poem is compressed into two-thirds of its original space, through the expedient of representing the less interesting and more?mechanical passages by a condensed prose outline, in which it has been sought as far as possible to preserve the very words of the poet. While deprecating a too critical judgement on the bare and constrained precis standing in such trying?juxtaposition, it is hoped that the labour bestowed in saving the reader the trouble of wading through much that is not essential for the enjoyment of Spencer's marvellous allegory, will not be unappreciated.
As regards the manner in which the text of the two great works, especially of The Canterbury Tales, is presented, the Editor is aware that some whose judgement is weighty will differ from him. This volume has been prepared "for popular perusal;" and its very raison d'etre would have failed, if the ancient?orthography had been retained. It has often been affirmed by editors of Chaucer in the old forms of the