I went to Borders the other night, just to look around and kill some time. I decided to see what kinds of Chaucer books they have on the shelf; I plan to visit the other bookstores in town, too, just to get an idea of what's readily available.
There wasn't much. Tons of Dante, yes, but not much Chaucer.
There were six different books total:
CT, Oxford World Classics. 1985, 1998.
This was a modern translation. It was okay.
CT, Everyman's Library. 1908, 1958, 1992.
It was in Middle English and severly annotated. It looked pretty good, but seriously? 1908?
CT, Penguin. 1951, 2003.
This one is pretty standard, actually -- one of the most common copies of Chaucer you'll find.
CT (selected), Barron's. 1948, 1970.
This is an interlinear translation. Useful, I suppose, but pretty brutal to read.
CT (selected), Bantam Classic. 1964, 1981.
Another pretty standard edition.
CT, Enriched Classic. 1948, 1987, 2001.
This one is in prose. I have mixed feelings about this. Translating Chaucer's rhymes is rather difficult -- not least of all (as others have pointed out) because some lines "fit" into modern English while others don't. But it's just really weird to pick up Chaucer and see big paragraphs.
That's it, that's all the Chaucer.
What is striking to me is just how old most of these are. 1908? 1948? Holy cow, no wonder people don't want to read old stuff -- it's too old. When the "modern" translations are antiquated, why bother slogging through it? (Which, I suppose, is an argument against translation.)
It seems to me quite obvious: we need a shiny new version of Chaucer, with an original publication date of 2007 or 2008 or 2009. Considering that Beowulf and Gilgamesh have just gotten new translations (and lovely ones), I think there is a market for a new Chaucer edition, translation or otherwise. I mean, does anyone know what Seamus Heaney is up to these days?
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