Alan Gaylord Reads Chaucer: Miller's Tale and Friar's Tale
Our recording of the Friar's Tale has been combined with a reading of the Miller's Tale too by Alan Gaylord.
Chaucer Aloud: The Varieties of Textual Interpretation
This version incorporates the original sound recordings by many Chaucerian scholars at the appropriate sections in the audio book. Betsy Bowden reads her own writing; Paul Thomas reads excerpts from authors, poets, and scholars.
Chaucer Aloud: The Varieties of Textual Interpretation
This is the 2nd edition of Betsy Bowden's book originally published in 1982 by U Penn Press. Please click on the first paragraph of Long Description to receive your download of Readings by Scholars, representing the Varieties of Textual Interpretation.
Live at Kalamazoo: The Nun's Priest's Tale
An enthusiastic live performance of Chaucer's mock-heroic beast fable, with the chase scene crowd of animals and neighbors played partly by the audience attending.
Michael Alexander Reads Chaucer: The Cook's Tale and a Selection of Short Poems
Readings of Chaucer's Cook's Tale and some favorite short poems of Chaucer's for Michael Alexander, recorded in July 2007 in Wells, Somerset.
Sir Thopas: Two Readings
One of the two tales told by the pilgrim Chaucer. Unfortunately the Host, who judges the tales, finds this tale by Geoffrey not worth a fly, especially because of its rhyme doggerel. Chaucer's droll burlesque of the worst in popular romances in his day.
The Clerk’s Tale
The story of patient Griselda and her seemingly inhuman husband Walter, this is a tale Chaucer borrowed from Petrarch by way of Boccaccio.
The Franklin’s Tale
A Breton lay, this tale of fin amor in marriage puts knight, squire, lady, and clerk under some pressure to behave properly. Are vows between lovers/spouses broken, or does this marriage look even stronger by the end of the tale?
The General Prologue
In his General Prologue, Chaucer speaks to us in his voice as one of the 29 pilgrims on their way from Southwark to Canterbury Cathedral to see the relics of St. Thomas à Becket. He introduces his fellow pilgrims one by one or sometimes in groups.
The Knight's Tale
Two cousins born at the same time fall in love with the same princess. Which one will win her hand? One of Chaucer's best-developed romances, the Knight's Tale is full of surprises.
The Man of Law’s Tale
Almost a saint's life, this tale tells of a Roman emperor's daughter of such holiness that her first husband-to-be, a Muslim, converts to Christianity and is then slaughtered in his own mother's jihad. Will Custance survive in a rudderless boat?
The Manciple’s Tale
The Manciple's story of metamorphosis when the crow is changed from a white bird to a black feathered bird because he told all that he saw Apollo's wife doing one day.
The Merchant’s Tale
This is Chaucer's darkest fabliau in which he takes on the nobility for a change. Colder even than the typical December-May marriage is that between the aged January and May here. But Damyan is nigh in the hortus conclusus, as the gods look on.
The Miller’s Tale
The Miller's answer to the love triangle in the Knight's Tale that immediately precedes, we soon see what is different about the characters in a romance and a fabliau. Perhaps the most thorough poetic justice shown in any of Chaucer's fabliaux.
The Monk’s Tale
The Monk's series of 17 of the promised 100 examples of the fall of great men and women (de casibus tragedies) is finally interrupted by the Knight, who wants to hear stories of those who have fallen whose Fortune improves.