Meaning of 'He was a veray parfit gentil knight'

The famous line from the General Prologue and something to aspire to for the rest of us.

In terms of meaning 'veray' is from the French of which the modern version is 'vrai' - meaning 'true', 'parfit' you can understand from the modern French 'parfait' for 'perfect' and 'gentil' which would translate to a modern 'gentleman' or someone 'noble' in character.

So, 'He was a true perfect noble knight.'

With thanks to thnidu for some corrections to the above.

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?