Still Alive

Okay, so first of all, yes, I'm still alive. Yes, it's been over two months since my last post. I think I've got a good excuse...

So here at the end of the school year, I'll finally be able to catch up on everything, and I might even post more often. For now though, I just finished reading some Chaucer.

I've liked The Canterbury Tales since the first time I found the book on my high school English teacher's shelf. This edition was interesting though, because it was an interlinear translation. Technically, Chaucer doesn't need to be translated. He is writing in English, and anyone with a reasonable amount of patience, and perhaps the aid of a dictionary from time to time, ought to be able to read Chaucerian English. In fact, the level of difficulty is not much different from that of trying to read one of George MacDonald's dialect-laden Scottish novels from the 1800s. However, the fact remains that there are plenty of words and phrases that will trip you up as you read Chaucer and make the stories less enjoyable for you. That's why I loved the idea of an interlinear translation of The Canterbury Tales. You can read Chaucer's original language, and, rather than having to open a dictionary when you come to a difficult word, you can simply glance below it to get the sense of the sentence and keep going. I wish this had been all of the tales rather than just a selection, but in any case it was a fun way to read Chaucer.