Encouraged by Chaucer and the Tabard Inn landlord, a band of pilgrims
tell their tales while travelling to Thomas Becket`s shrine in Canterbury.
And what tales they are. Most unlike anything you would expect to hear
from pious souls on holy pilgrimage! The Wife of Bath unashamedly tells
us of five husbands, a drunken miller amuses everyone (except the Reeve)
with a story of practical jokes and their sometimes painful consequences.
And so it goes bawdily on. Until, centuries later, the stories are
translated from Chaucer`s Middle English and brilliantly illustrated
by an artist who persuades us he must have been there; that he
had to have known those characters to draw them so convincingly.
He brings them to life for us; to laugh with; be shocked by; to enjoy.
We can ride with them, listen to their tales, see them in all their finery.
Or, in the raucous case of our merry miller, watch him fall from his horse,
loudly declaring, `If the words get muddled in my tale, just put it down
to too much Southwark ale!`
|
|
