THE CANTERBURY TALES

A knight, a miller, a cook, and a nun are just a few of the more than two dozen lively characters traveling together on an annual pilgrimage from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket. They each tell a tale drawn from religion, folklore, classic myth, or even gossip to make the time pass. Geoffrey Chaucer's simple literary device provides an unprecedented and unsurpassed view of his fourteenth-century England. Five of the BBC's most versatile and creative narrators do a marvelous job voicing the personalities of the storytellers. Burton Raffel's very complete and contemporary translation retains the poetic half rhymes of the original Middle English and includes the often severely abridged monk and parson's tales. It never ceases to amaze how immediate and modern Chaucer's world continues to sound. B.P. 2010 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: JANUARY 2009]