Chaucer is credited with creating one of the most important works in the canon of English literature with his collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories, and low farce known as The Canterbury Tales. The occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight’s account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath’s Arthurian legend to the ribald anecdotes of the Miller and the Cook is a storytelling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life. This competition is the occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight’s account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath’s Nevill Coghill’s masterful and vivid translation of Chaucer’s Middle English into modern English verse is rendered with consummate skill to retain all of the vigor and poetry of Chaucer’s Middle English from the fourteenth century.
