KPFA-FM Music Dept. ➔ A Reading from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Analog Audio
Event Type
Spoken WordOrigin
KPFAIdentifier
P.CHA.GEO.01Program Length
50 minDates
| broadcast| 1977-11-07 | created
Description
Professor Jess B. Bessinger, Jr. reads the general prologue and the concluding retraction of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales.” One of the foremost experts on early English poetry, Bessinger offers a masterful recitation of this seminal work of literature, all in the original Middle English. The lyrical quality of Chaucer’s masterpiece is best appreciated when read aloud by someone fluent in the archaic form of English in which it was written. While most students have read at least one of these tales in a High School English class, those often belabored readings, replete with many mispronunciations and frequent interruptions, as various footnotes are investigated, often remove much of the beauty, and mask the humor, that is the hallmark of the original poem. It is therefore a marvelous opportunity to have all the various characters of the book so vividly brought to life by this recording.Genres
LiteraturePoetry
Musical Selections
General Prologue (45:49) -- The Retraction (2:24)Performers
J. B. Bessinger, narratorSubjects
Christian pilgrims and pilgrimagesEnglish poetry
Tales, Medieval
Related places
Berkeley (Calif.) (was recorded at)Berkeley (Calif.) (was broadcast at)
Related Entities
Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400Bessinger, J. B.
Bessinger, Jess B.