Geoffrey Chaucer
Published: 2015-08-05
Total Pages: 68
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Excerpt from Stories Form Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer was an English poet who lived in the fourteenth century. For nearly five hundred years he has ministered to the mirth and gladness of the English-speaking world. In the Canterbury Tales the fourteenth century rises from the grave, so to speak; and Chaucer's pilgrims - a motley band - are almost the only men of his time who live and breathe immortalized by the genius of the poet. Never again, we fear, will Merrie England see the friendly social gathering of knight and squire, of stately dame and low-born cook, of merchant, miller, and friar, spending the evening together in listening to such tales as these. Some of them, no doubt, were coarse enough to make one wonder how they could be told in the hearing of ladies and of priests. Chaucer's Tales may be regarded as the first and most popular of the short stories that have won for themselves so prominent a place in literature. His Canterbury Tales are the first miscellany of poetry and fiction in our tongue that has achieved world-wide popularity. Their age in itself is no small addition to their charm. These stories, which are now being scattered broadcast over the English-speaking world, were familiar to the men who fought the Wars of the Roses. They cheered the youth of the Reformers, they were the favorite reading of the heroes of the Elizabethan age; and down to our own time these short stories in verse have been the solace and the amusement of successive generations of our race. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.