On Chaucer’s tale

The Canterbury Tales

A New Unabridged Translation by Burton Raffel

Geoffrey Chaucer

The Modern Library: 624 pp. $35

Geoffrey Chaucer runs the gamut. There are many Chaucers: funny, gloomy, pious, political, gross. There is the learned Chaucer, the feminist Chaucer, the social Chaucer, the religious Chaucer, the rhetorical Chaucer, the Chaucer who attempts little more than trying to titillate the groundling mind with nothing but farce, foolishness and fart jokes. A reader of Chaucer encounters idioms, prayers, jingles, puns, tall tales, harangues, a few inflectional survivals from Old English, words no longer used, slang. It was for such multifariousness that he became “the firste fyndere of our faire language.”

Translating Chaucer’s masterpiece is a herculean feat, needless to say. “The Canterbury Tales” is a work, 24 tales in all, that constitutes almost all of the literary forms in medieval literature: parodies, exempla, pious sermons, literary confessions, stately romances, saints’ legends, lubricious anecdotes, you name it. Generally, it is “Estates satire,” as well -- types. “The Franklin’s Tale” is a Breton lai. “The Miller’s Tale,” that smutty story, is a fabliau. “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is a beast fable. The Parson offers an austerely orthodox treatise on penance. Two tales are in prose: “The Parson’s Tale” and the “Tale of Melibee,” which is full of legal jargon. “The Monk’s Tale” expresses scorn for disrespectful and unruly commoners.

“I have tried to give as much of the effect of Chaucer’s poetry as I could,” Burton Raffel states in the foreword, explaining as if confounded that in his translation the sound of the original poetry is unreproducible. We are told we are being given a “translation from” rather an “edition of” the poem, meaning simply that he is using the accepted order of the classic from the standard F.N. Robinson edition. (Chaucer didn’t prepare a full, consecutive grouping of the full, final poem.) When Raffel confesses that he cannot integrate Chaucer’s syntax with his own modern version, it is understandable. Although Chaucer’s syntax in the original, untranslated, is very much like our own, for a translator to try to save or salvage parts in an otherwise translated sentence would of course cause problems.

Remarkably, Chaucerian English is quite accessible to modern readers (often it is downright simple) or else asks merely for determination to read it. The language is realistic and, oddly, modern. It “demonstrates,” as John Gardner noted, rather than “explores,” and the openness and freshness of imagery has never failed to appeal to the popular audience for whom the tales were composed. Take “The Summoner’s Tale.” How difficult is it to understand the following?

“Now thanne, put in thyn hand doun by my bak,”

Seyde this man, “and grope wel bihynde.

Bynethe my buttok there shaltow fynde

A thing that I have hyd in pryvetee.”

“A!” thoghte this frere, “that shal go with me!”

And doun his hand he launcheth to the clifte,

In hope for to fynde there a yifte.

And whan this sike man felte this frere

About his tuwel grope there and here,

Amydde his hand he leet the frere a fart.

Ther nys no capul, drawynge in a cart,

That myghte have lete a fart of swich a soun.

Look up capul (cart-horse) and tuwel (hole), and it could be a modern schoolboy telling a snappy whopper to his friend!

Raffel’s is a reductive, if accessible, translation. When he characterizes his undertaking by stating, “Comprehension by modern readers is the key,” we suspect right off that we are being served a dumbed-down version. He renames many familiar characters. There is no reason a person would anymore know what a “Steward” does than a Reeve, although here the former replaces the latter. The occupation of manciple is changed into “Provisioner.” Cui bono? Chaucer’s Pardoner becomes by transubstantiation the “Pardon-Peddler,” but may not one ask, if a reader knows what a pardon is, would he not therefore know what a Pardoner does? What is clarified by denominating the Canon a “Cleric” or the Yeoman a “Magician,” and what is gained by the leavening alteration? When Raffel arbitrarily leaves the names Squire and Summoner in the text, moreover, should one assume that (a) these particular two are modern professions and that (b) one is familiar with them? When we are told, as indeed Raffel rather cavalierly tells us, that “virtually no one, today, understands what a ‘canon’ is, or what he does, or even where he does it, and much the same may be said of a ‘yeoman,’ ” should one therefore conclude that new translations should now be required, say, of Dickens’ “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” and Dr. Seuss’ fable “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins” in which, respectively, a canon and a yeomen happen to appear? I must say, I was repeatedly struck by how cheap and vulgarized the paraphrased work of magnificent poetry can be.

Consider this comparison between the original and this translation. The Reeve, recounting the story of a pompous miller, describes that man:

“A joly poppere baar he in his pouche;

Ther was no man, for peril, dorste hym touched.

A Sheffeld thwitel baar he in his hose.

Round was his face, and camus was his nose;

As agile as an ape was his skulle.”

Raffel’s “Steward” says,

“And in his pouch he carried a fine little dagger.

No one bothered him, for fear of danger.

His long stockings were long, and held a Sheffield knife.

His face was round, his nose was stubby and wide.

His skull was bald, as naked as any ape.”

The translation is wordier, flatter, less succinct, dependent on cliches, comparatively imprecise and even redundant. Crispness has been sacrificed for clarity. (It should also be pointed out that Raffel doesn’t follow the standard Chaucerian line-numbering, beginning every tale with line 1, making it almost impossible to compare his translation with the original.)

Flavor is everything in Chaucer. Words, images, passages. Beyond all else, his flavor must be kept in any translation. The poem that is found prevailingly in pentameter couplets needs that continuing bounce or beat for its rude, narrative value. As a college student, but even in high school, I read “The Canterbury Tales” in the original Middle English in Robinson’s edition. Many editions are available. There are prose format translations for easy readings. There are interlinear versions. There are duncical translations that turn the poem into a different entity altogether.

Surely no one can doubt that this splendid work should ideally be read in Chaucer’s own words, even if it means glancing at a marginal gloss or a footnote. “Glosynge is a glorious thing,” the Friar tells in “The Summoner’s Tale.” It is undeniable that such odd Middle English words like “hende” and “joly” refuse translation. Strange words proliferate: gypon, lixt, cloutes, lymytour, artow, mooder. (I say: Look them up!) Chaucerian variants can also confuse. As A.C. Cawley points out in his well-annotated Everyman edition, one can dredge up at least 10 variants in the work for the word “horse” alone: ambler, hackney, caple, dexter, palfry, rouncy, stot and more. There is no end of feudal terms and topical allusions. It is Cawley who also sagaciously observes that “glosses and paraphrases can be just as harmful as a modernized version . . . if they are allowed to take precedence over the original.” He advises that where footnotes or notes are not needed, they should be ignored. When I was teaching, I assured my students that the day they started reading rather than ignoring scholarly paraphernalia was the day they were becoming what good students should be.

I commend Raffel for his ambition to get folks to read this complex poem, but though he gives readers access to the mysteries, he ironically robs those mysteries of their beauty. The genius of this magnificent poem is precisely in its original words. The fault is not in the concept of the undertaking but rather in the nature of it. Puns can lose their significance. Rhymes are lost. Colors fade. Substitution can seem like a violation. There is a rough equity to a degree, but it is what critic George Steiner refers to as “radical equity.”

Chaucer is the crown, the full flower, of English medieval verse. As Ezra Pound declared in “ABC of Reading,” “Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books forever.”