Again, the most famous scene in Chaucer, when, in The Miller’s Tale, the woman puts her bottom out of the window to a would-be lover:
And back he started. Something was amiss;
He knew quite well a woman has no beard,
Yet something rough and hairy had
appeared.
‘What have I done ?’ he said. ‘Can that be
you?’
‘Teehee !’ she cried and clapped the window to.
This is Coghill, and it is very close to Chaucer’s original. The demands of verse impose a certain decorum.
But in Ackroyd this has become:
Absolon could see nothing at all, of course, and so he put out his tongue and gave her a French kiss. He was eagerly slurping her bum. But then he knew something was wrong. He had never known a woman with a beard before. But he knew this much — he had licked on something rough and hairy. ‘Fuck me,’ he said. ‘This isn’t right.’ Alison laughed out loud, and shut the window.
The mischievousness of the verse has gone, and the humour. In his preface, Ackroyd writes that Chaucer’s salacious energy can be maintained just by transcribing his words accurately. So why the ‘adaptation’, all that underlining, those constant ‘Geddits?’ ? This drawn-out version sounds like a new curate trying out profanities to ingratiate himself with the local low-life. The mystery of this book is why an accomplished writer like Peter Ackroyd should have attempted such an approach in the first place.
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