The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling Book

[Take the rooster Chanticleer in the Nun's Priest's Tale. Chanticleer is described by Chaucer as "feathering" his hen Pertelote twenty times and he "trad [trod] her just as often." Ackroyd translates this as "He put his wings around Pertelote, and fucked her, at least twenty times." Ackroyd argues in his introduction that "trad is a euphemism for sexual intercourse." Perhaps, but it is also a quite literal description of how birds mate, complete in Chaucer's version but not in Ackroyd's, with the ecstatically fluttering feathers and wings that anyone familiar with chickens'or city pigeons'will easily recognize.

Then there is this odd omission: In the Merchant's Tale, the straying wife tells her husband that she has to climb a tree to get fruit because she has a craving, implying that she's pregnant--which is why at the end of the story the husband forgives all and (in the original) strokes her womb. Here is how the wife describes her craving for fruit: I telle yow wel, a womman in my plit
May han to fruyt so greet an appetit
That she may dyen but she of it have.Closely translated: "I tell you honestly, a woman in my condition may have so great an appetite for a fruit that she may die unless she has it." Ackroyd renders this as "For the love of heaven help me to this fruit. I might die otherwise." Not a word about cravings or conditions or hubbies rubbing possibly pregnant tummies.
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