Those husbands that I had, Three of them were good and two were bad. The three that I call good were rich and old... One of the most bawdy, entertaining and popular stories from The Canterbury Tales. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343-1400). Chaucer's works available in Penguin Classics are The Canterbury Tales, Love Visions and Troilus and Criseyde.

An ill-matched band of strangers sets off on a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury. To amuse themselves along the way, they hold a storytelling competition — but the tales soon turn from ripping yarns to slanging matches. Geoffrey Chaucer's outrageous comic tales from the 14th century are retold for children of today in this luxury, illustrated gift edition.

In Chaucer’s classic, much-loved collection of tales a host of medieval characters come alive on the page – and they are as lively and colourful now as they were seven hundred years ago! In this retelling of five of the stories in modern English, Chaucer’s pilgrims entertain us with tales of knights and ruffians, desperate lovers, resourceful women, talking animals… and more.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Full wise is he that can himselven knowe.' Written at the end of the fourteenth century, the poet Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales are a collection of stories told in Middle-English. Thirty pilgrims leave Southwark to travel to a shrine in Canterbury and become the narrators, telling each other stories of chivalrous romance, fable, parable, debate and comedy as they journey. Their accounts of the human condition remain as resonant today as when they were first written.

We'll give a free dinner to the person who tells the best story. Now, put up your hands if you agree. The pilgrims all held up their hands. A group of pilgrims are travelling together for five days from London to Canterbury. On the way, each pilgrim has to tell a story to keep the others amused. Some stories are happy, and some are sad. But they all have a message, and we can learn from them.

During his life, Geoffrey Chaucer (born c.1340) was courtier, diplomat, revenue collector, administrator, negotiator, overseer of building projects, landowner and knight of the shire. He was servant, retainer, husband, friend and father, but is now mainly known as a poet and 'the father of English literature', a postion to which he was raised by other writers in the generation after his death. It was Boccaccio's Decameron which inspired Chaucer, in the 1390s, to begin work on The Canterbury Tales, which was still unfinished at his death in October 1400. It tells the story of a group of 30 pilgrims who meet at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, on the south bank of the Thames opposite the city of London, and travel together to visit the then famous shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury cathedral. The tavern host, who accompanies them, suggests that they amuse one another along the way by telling stories, with the best storyteller awarded a meal in the tavern (paid for by all the others) on their return. The stories told by the pilgrims range from bawdy comedies through saints' lives and moral tracts to courtly romances, always delivered with a generous helping of Chaucer's own sly wit and ironic humour. Although basing his characters on the stereotypes of 'estates satire', Chaucer succeeds in his aim of producing an overview of his times and their culture, for posterity, in the manner of Italian, proto-Renaissance, writers. This transcription and edition is taken from British Library MS Harley 7334, produced within ten years of Chaucer's death. The on-page notes and glosses aim to enable readers with little or no previous experience of medieva

The year is 1386 and the first flowers of spring are here. A number of pilgrims are going to Canterbury to visit the tomb of Saint Thomas Becket, and they all tell stories on the way. Who should be the stronger in a marriage — the husband or the wife? And what happens when two men fall in love with the same woman? In these five stories from Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales we find different answers to these questions from the Knight, the Wife of Bath, the Clerk of Oxford, the Merchant, and the Franklin.

Now listen with good will, as I go straight to my subject matter, in which you may hear the double sorrows of Troilus in his love for Criseyde, and how she forsook him before she died Like Romeo and Juliet, or Tristan and Iseult, the names of Troilus and Criseyde will always be united: a pair of lovers whose names are inseparable from passion and tragedy. Troilus and Criseyde is Chaucer's masterpiece and was prized for centuries as his supreme achievement. The story of how Troilus and Criseyde discover love and how she abandons him for Diomede after her departure from Troy is dramatically presented in all its comedy and tragic pathos. With its deep humanity and penetrating insight, Troilus and Criseyde is now recognized as one of the finest narrative poems in the English language. This is a new translation into contemporary English of Chaucer's greatest single poem which can be read alongside the Middle English original, or as an accurate and readable version in its own right.