The Selected Canterbury Tales: A New Verse Translation

A poetically faithful and compelling translation of Chaucer's classic.

In the tradition of Seamus Heaney's Beowulf and Marie Borroff's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sheila Fisher's The Selected Canterbury Tales is a vivid, lively, and readable translation of the most famous work of England's premier medieval poet. Preserving Chaucer's rhyme and meter and faithfully articulating his poetic voice, Fisher makes Chaucer's tales accessible to a contemporary ear while inviting readers to the Middle English original on facing pages.

Renowned for its astute character portraits (from the chivalrous Knight to the assertive Wife of Bath), timeless themes, realistic representations of fourteenth-century English life, and sheer energy of storytelling, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales should be available to everyone, in all the richness of its meaning and meter. Choosing fourteen tales that range from the high style of courtly romance to raunchy ramblings and examples of religious zeal gone astray, Fisher does justice to Chaucer's masterwork in a way sure to attract a new audience of modern readers.