I have to admit that the poetry did not thrill me here. I could see that it was well done, but it didn't really appeal - the more romantic of the poems, often titled as "Complaints" were honestly rather whiny. And yes, I get it's the whole courtly love thing, but still: whiny.

What I did enjoy here was the language. This particular edition combines both the original Middle English, alongside a modern English translation. Now, I've never studied Middle English and prior to this would not know it if it fell on me, so I was surprised and interested to find that I could mostly follow along. Not well, and I often had to read the original out loud to try and bypass the spelling in order to get to the meaning, but even so. It took a while, and some lines I simply could not puzzle out before resorting to the translation (I read the Middle version of each poem before the modern), but the attempt was entertaining if the poetry was often not so much.

I do like puzzles! And there was one short poem where Chaucer wished mange upon a scribe who was inaccurate in his work, so that was amusing.