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Understanding Chaucer I start to understand that Chaucier was trying to describe what he saw in others. He certainly does not write about himself, for even the slyest of all sly politicians would not be able to wear so many hats. And I am not sure if Chaucer would have stopped at 120 tales if he would have ever completed such goal as said he had set. He only finished twenty-one according to Stanley Apfelbaum in his notes in The Unabridged Canterbury Tales, yet I counted 23 Tales reading the Coghill Edition. And does it matter how many he wrote? I am able to visualize the group of men and women who set out to visit Thomas a Becket’s shrine of Canterbury. I imagine the five day trip from Southwark to Canterbury. I can clearly hear the various speakers telling their stories. And every person has a story to tell. Not long ago people used to tell stories just before television grabbed the public interest, stories were in demand. Storytelling has been a great past-time may it have been gossip or information, it always has entertained. I don’t think it was necessary for the host of the Tabard Inn in Southwark to offer a reward, a splendid meal for the best tale, to make them talk as they were walking on their pilgrimage. With or without rewards those people were bursting at the seems to let out their tales and I have to admit I like gut-level talk. I like Chaucer’s Tales, yet I am impressed about the many versions of Chaucer’s words, which are not his words and barely the same meaning which he had. It allows a good comparison with other published works, which have been rewritten over and over, such as The Bible, Homer, and Plato. What is fascinating is the process of change from the French Chaucier (the translator) to the English Chaucer (The English Poet): Once upon a time there was this man Chaucier who in France translated Italian Poetry into French-Saxon-Languages. Nowadays he, Chaucer, is called the father of English Poetry. This man who never reached much fame during his life time became a standard in poetry few can measure up against. Yet just as Chaucier translated the Roman de la Rosa, Theseida and Filostrato into a language more suitable to him and his readers, others translated his "the Tales by Chaucer" into their appropriate languages too, and so much translating is being done from English into English that one might want to ask, what did Chaucer really write? And I read many times many pages in the attempt to get a feel for Chaucer, yet every time I get to meet great people who all have try to create a better Chaucer, each one in his very own way, and each one tints and colors the words actually painted by the master into a beautiful mosaic of words and time. . . . The longer I look at Chaucer’s works the stronger I feel to let those others play with Chaucer’s words, those others who short of their own artistic talents less gifted have tried and try and shall try in future to perfect what is so great and perfect already written by the greatest English poet, the great Chaucier. I feel my calling is to add my tales to his to make the Canterbury Tales an even 10 dozen tales.
01/09/09 |
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