You say that like the Canterbury Tales you'd buy now is the same one that Chaucer wrote. I had a version that was in the original Middle English, and it's practically unreadable. It's be edited shitloads.
It also works the other way. I remember watching a video about the making of Deadwood, where they talked about having to make a decision about the swearing. The original script had period-accurate swearing, but when they showed it to modern audiences, they found it hilarious. To get the message across, they had to use language that was meaningful to a modern audience. One of the reasons that racist jokes from the 70s are not funny anymore isn't just because they're offensive, it's because attitudes have changed to the point that no-one gets them. People just won't get a joke based on stereotypes that were prevalent 50 years ago. Similarly, it's not a massive issue to edit a kids book to reflect modern culture (which isn't to say that some of the individual decisions aren't ridiculous - perhaps deliberately so to create publicity). Having said that, as one author said when discussing this, it'd be far better to start pushing talented modern children's authors rather than editing the books of a long-dead one so they can continue to dominate the market.
