The Canterbury Tales: A Bluffer's Guide

I've been reading Peter Ackroyd's retelling of the Canterbury Tales.  By God, they are FILTHY. 

This version is great if, like me, you have always been mildly curious about the content of the tales but don't have the time or energy to tackle them in the original form.  I picked it up in a 3 for 2 offer a few weeks ago and have been dipping in ever since.  Once you start, it's pretty easy to romp through.

Romp is the right word: in a nutshell the tales are full of sex, LOTS of sex, and copious amounts of farting. Oh, I know that they also tell us all kinds of things about 14th century English society, and that the characters represent various aspects of life and that Geoffrey Chaucer is very clever and all that.  But basically he has written a dirty book.

One thing I've learnt is that a lot of cuckolding went on in the fourteenth century. The people getting off with each other aren't meant to be getting off with each other as a general rule, and they are all quite proud of this.  Two of them end up doing it up a tree, while the cuckoldee (surely that's the right term for someone being cuckolded?)  is hanging around down below. That takes some nerve, not to mention some pretty impressive middle core strength (all that balancing. She must have done Pilates.).

Maybe you don't have time to read the book though.  For you, and just for you, here's the skinny, aka MY BLUFFER'S GUIDE TO THE CANTERBURY TALES (pt 1 of I'm not sure how many yet)

***DISCLAIMER(S)***

1. if you are about to sit a really important exam, or even a not-all-that-important one, or are applying for British citizenship (surely Chaucer is the kind of thing they ask you about in those tests?) I wouldn't rely on the following information. Seriously, please don't. Go read Peter Ackroyd's book. 2. May contain strobe lighting effects which can trigger seizures.  3. Also, nuts. You have been warned.

The Knight's Tale:  This is one of the least filthy ones, actually.  Probably because the knight, as all good knights should be, is noble and full of valour and good and true.  (He's travelling with his son, the Squire, who sounds a bit like Roger Ramjet, and was quite dishy, although not really my type.  We'll get to his story later.)  Two cousins, Arcite and Palamon are chucked into prison by the Duke of Athens.  From the tower-which-is-their-prison they both see and fall in love with the Duke's sister in law Emily.  Arcite is set free as a favour to the Duke's oldest childhood friend who conveniently is also Arcite's gay lover.  This gets nothing more than a fleeting mention in the tale (or at least in Acroyd's version of it) which leads me to think that either dukes with gay lovers who they never think to mention to their oldest childhood friend were more common than you might think in the fourteenth century, or that Chaucer (or maybe Ackroyd) was trying not to draw too much attention to a lazy plot device.  But far be it from me to criticise.

Anyway, Arcite is only set free on the condition that he never returns to Athens, which of course means never setting eyes on the lovely Emily again.  So now we have Palamon, who is locked up in a tower but can see Emily every day, and Arcite, free as a bird, who can never see her again.  Cue lots of moping around and moaning about this from both of them.  After years of this, Arcite sneaks back into Athens in disguise, and Palamon escapes from the tower, and they bump into each other somewhat conveniently, and have a fight, and the Duke finds them fighting, and is about to kill them both when all of the ladies in his party swoon with the romance of it all, so he decides not to.  Instead, he tells them both to come back in a year with an army of 100 knights, and they can have a proper battle to see who can have Emily, who doesn't actually want either of them, but that's by the by.  A year later there's a big bloody battle, and (spoiler alert) Arcite wins, but then he falls off his horse and dies, and Palamon and Emily live happily ever after.