Posts Tagged ‘The Canterbury Tales’

AnglophiliaBooksCharles DickensEnglandLiteratureTravel

July 9, 2016

A Day of Pilgrimages

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(This is the twelfth in a series that begins with A Night in Steerage.) I’ve wanted to see Canterbury Cathedral for as long as I can remember.  Never more so than after I read The Canterbury Tales a few summers’ ago.  It was on the itinerary for Wednesday but I almost didn’t go.   There were  Read the Rest…

BooksLiteraturePoemsThe Norton Anthology

November 10, 2013

Doin’ the Norton (volume one)

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I’ve been reading The Norton Anthology of English Literature Volume 1 in stealth because I wasn’t sure I wanted to declare it A Project. But I have gotten passed the metaphysical poets and am rounding the 18th century so I think it’s a done, if not finished, deal. I was completely sucked in by Chaucer.  Read the Rest…

BooksLiteraturePoemsThe Norton Anthology

October 18, 2013

Chaucer: Another Round of Farts

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As our Canterbury pilgrims move along the road the friar and the summoner get into a pissing match with each other by telling a story about the other’s profession. Since there seem to be friars and summoners all over the place, I’ll start with a few guidelines: The Pissing Friar and the Pissing Summoner are  Read the Rest…

BooksLiteraturePoemsThe Norton Anthology

October 12, 2013

The Potty-Mouthed Chaucer

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As I snickered my way through some of The Canterbury Tales I got to wondering why on earth Chaucer isn’t favored reading in every high school English class and college fraternity in the entire world. Of course, I know it’s because one has to dig hard so hard to get through the language, but the  Read the Rest…

BooksLiteraturePoemsPoliticsPostsPsychoanalysisThe Norton Anthology

October 3, 2013

In Which I Take on the Wife of Bath

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I’d heard about this woman: sexually voracious, loud mouth, obscene, headstrong, selfish, power-hungry, and immoral. I was eager to meet her. News flash: she is none of those things in my estimation. Here, word for word, is how we might expect to describe a man similar in nature to the wife of Bath: man of  Read the Rest…