Why Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Are Tasteless - and Should Stay that Way

I came across a 'translation' of the Canterbury Tales intended for young children, having recently read the original version (albeit in modern English, but not-overly-liberal translation) of the 'The Prioress's Tale.' This is the one where the Devil convinces all of the Jews in a certain Asian city to kill a young Christian boy and dispose of his body in an outhouse pit.

God miraculously intervenes by causing the body to be discovered, the boy goes to heaven after miraculously telling everyone that he will, and every Jew in the city is slaughtered in retribution. They were, after all, each partially responsible for his death, and besides are a "cursed people, unchanged since Herod's day." (Whether Chaucer himself thought so is not clear, but his Prioress certainly did, and it was common enough sentiment at the time.)

I picked up the children's version and instantly turned to the Prioress's Tale, curious to see how the translator treated what is frankly a tasteless and horrifyingly intolerant story to modern ears. Sure enough, the murder is made slightly less egregious but omitting the part where they dump the body in "a place in which the Jews purged their entrails." Also, the co-conspirators are punished not with torture and death but merely with torture and we are led to imagine a benign, Bush administration torture that serves everyone's best interest , including the one being tortured.

It's a better story -- or at least , it's not as bad -- but it's also not what Chaucer wrote, Chaucer is fart jokes and pretty young wives cheating on their witless old husbands and appalling racial and religious intolerance, albeit combined with lofty and edifying tales full of both humanist virtue and Christian virtue. To remove the offensive parts, or dull their impact, allows us only a distorted view of history. Reading these old tales is a bit like talking to a bigoted grandfather: you came away with an appreciation of his life experience and knowledge and a firm resolve to never be like him.

That Chaucer may be inappropriate for children is arguable, perhaps conceedable. But surely find him worth the wait if they encounter him at a later age, and unmodified.