Top Chaucer Tales of 2009

It's time to look back at the year on this blog's collection of Chaucer's Tales.

So, which have been the most popular and in which order:

5. Staring the list at number five is The Parson's Tale.

4. The ever popular Merchant's Tale is at number four.

3. At number three is The Prioress's Tale.

2. So near yet so far is the Pardoner's Tale at number two.

1. And the Christmas number one and most popular tale of the year, nearly double the number two was The Doctor's Tale. It seems Virginious the Knight is ever popular....

Full wise is he that can himselven knowe

One of Chaucer's most famous quotes and yet still rings true today, showing that wisdom stands the test of time.

This is from The Monk's Tale which is a collection of seventeen short stories, which centre on tragedies. The Monk claims that he has a hundred, but the knight stops him after seventeen due to their sadness.

“There's never a new fashion but it's old."

After posting the Canterbury Tales, I decided to leave this blog to its own devices, bar dealing with the odd bit of comment spam. However, over time as the blog has established itself in the Google rankings, the traffic has picked up and there is now a steady stream of visitors to the site. Clearly the works of Chaucer do live on.

I've been considering whether there should be a more regular stream of posts or whether to leave the blog as it is as a resource for those searching for particular tales and quotes. Over to you, dear visitors?

Chaucer comes to Twitter

Just to prove that Chaucer can move with the times, I'm having a little fun by bringing some of Chaucer's quotes to Twitter. You can follow, ahem, the great man @chaucerstales.

As there are not many of his contemporaries that have survived, I did a little search to see some of the reviews of his works by the Twitterers. Clearly Chaucer is reaching a new generation, but shall we say the jury is still out on the merits of his masterpieces.

Stick with it, some things are better said in more than 140 characters...