Geoffrey Chaucer, Jill Mann Canterbury Tales

A diverse group of travelers on a pilgrimage to Canterbury exchanges an array of tales, including "The Wife of Bath," "The Prioress' Tale," "The Nun's Priest Tale," and "The Shipman's Tale," that paint a vivid picture of fourteenth-century medieval life, society, and values. Reprint.
Tells the story of a group of travelers on a pilgrimage, presented in its original Middle English and accompanied by background information, notes, and a glossary.
One of the greatest and most ambitious works in English literature, The Canterbury Tales depicts a storytelling competition between pilgrims drawn from all ranks of society. The tales are as various as the pilgrims themselves, encompassing comedy, pathos, tragedy, and cynicism. The Miller and the Reeve express their mutual antagonism in a pair of comic stories combining sex and trickery; in “The Shipman’s Tale,” a wife sells her favors to a monk. Others draw on courtly romance and fantasy: the Knight tells of rivals competing for the love of the same woman, and the Squire describes a princess who can speak to birds. In these twenty-four tales, Chaucer displays a dazzling range of literary styles and conjures up a wonderfully vivid picture of medieval life. Freshly established Middle English text with standardized spelling and punctuation and on-page glossing Features an introduction, a chronology of Chaucer's life and works, detailed explanatory notes, suggestions for further reading, a full glossary, and a bibliography Companion to the Penguin Classics original-spelling edition of Troilus and Criseyde