"Canterbury Tales" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Deity, of which we have already taken notice. He was employed by Mr. Ogle to translate some of Chaucer's Tales into modern English, which he performed with great spirit, and received at the rate of three pence a line for his trouble. Mr. Ogle published a complete edition of that old poet's Canterbury Tales Modernized; and Mr. Boyse's name is put to such Tales as were done by him. It had often been urged to Mr. Boyse to turn his thoughts towards the drama, as that was the most profitable kind of poetical writing, and as many a poet of inferior genius to him has raised large contributions on ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... interruption of the process. Yet he forsook the girl as if he had said all he had to say, and turned to James Dow. For he wanted to get rid of him before concluding his bargain with the girl, whose butter he was determined to have even if he must pay her own price for it. Like the Reeve in the Canterbury Tales, who "ever rode the hinderest of the rout," being such a rogue and such a rogue-catcher that he could not bear anybody behind his back, Bruce, when about the business that his soul loved, eschewed the ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... to that theory which credits the Canterbury Tales with being based on actual experience, and recalling the quaint courtyard of the inn as it appeared on that distant April day of 1388, it is a pleasant exercise of fancy to imagine Chaucer leaning over ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... coats and tight trousers were a great offence to old writers accustomed to long nightgown clothes. Compare Chaucer's complaint in the Canterbury Tales, The Parsones Tale, De Superbi, p.193, col. 2, ed. Wright. "Upon that other syde, to speke of the horrible disordinat scantnes of clothing, as ben these cuttid sloppis or anslets, that thurgh her schortnes ne covereth not the schamful membre of man, to wickid entent. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... to the assertion in Pycroft's "Course of English Reading," that he, Landor, failed to appreciate Chaucer, the old man, much vexed, refuted such a falsehood, saying: "On the contrary, I am a great admirer of his. I am extremely fond of the 'Canterbury Tales.' I much prefer Chaucer to Spenser; for allegory, when spun out, is unendurable." It is strange that a man apparently so well read as Mr. Pycroft should have so unjustly interpreted Landor, when it needed but a passing reference to the Conversations to disprove ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers, When each had numbered more than fourscore years; And Theophrastus at fourscore and ten Had but begun his "Characters of Men;" Chaucer at Woodstock with his nightingales, At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales; Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed Faust when eighty years were past: These are indeed exceptions; but they show How far the Gulf Stream of our youth may flow Into the arctic regions of our lives, Where little else ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... got me so muddled I don't know what I'm doing. Do you want me to believe that you're people out of a book? Why those old Canterbury Tales' characters never did live, Chaucer just made them up. If you aren't somebody dressed up to tease ...
— The Belles of Canterbury - A Chaucer Tale Out of School • Anna Bird Stewart
... Chaucer, "the morning star of English song," now began (1390?) to write his "Canterbury Tales," a series of stories in verse, supposed to be told by a merry band of pilgrims on their way from the Tabard Inn in Southwark, London, to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... where the people, I'm sure, often suffer from hunger. I couldn't give money—for one thing, I have very little, and then it's so demoralising, and one never knows whether the people will be offended—but I sat down and told the poor woman all about the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, and you can't think how interested she was, and how grateful! It quite brightened the day for her. One felt one ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing |
