Beginnings (12)—The Canterbury Tales

Click here for an introduction to the Round and Square series "Beginnings."

 

[a] Spring rain

When better than in April—with the sweet showers we are experiencing (and the dryness of March giving way to vibrant, fluid growth)—to celebrate spring and the odd beauty of The Canterbury Tales? I could not help but look out the window at the unending crappiness of this Wisconsin spring and think of the world of dank England, with cold, thawing furze and gray gloaming.

[b] Pilgrimalogist

I have always loved Chaucer, and for more than the bawdiness that first drew me to him for his medieval shock value. Long over that, I have come to see him as one of the most skillful in a long line of anthropologists from Homer to St. Augustine and on to Dante, Montaigne, Montesquieu, and a hardy range of thinkers from the Enlightenment to the Great War. Chaucer has a clear place in that group, and may be the best early interpreter of actual social clusters. For the Canterbury Tales surely portray a social cluster on a mission. Or rather a pilgrimage. Chaucer also knows how to set a tone in just a few words. From the opening line to the point where he begins to describe the knight (quoted below), he wraps us in the very sense(s) of springtime—from flora to fauna to human life en mouvement.

[d] Ba-sic language

[c] Chaucerside

It is not an easy read today, of course. Language changes. One of my classmates, in mock exasperation, once threw The Riverside Chaucer across the room, exclaiming that she would pick the book back up when that [jerk] "learned to spell." This is, of course, part of the charm for the patient twenty-first century reader. If we want sped redin', we can choose something else. Chaucer is for pondering...and social analysis.

For now, though (until we create a section called Chaucer Corner), let's just savor the language and the images of people on the move.

Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

Fragment I (Group A)

GENERAL PROLOGUE

HERE BYGYNNETH THE BOOK OF THE TALES OF CAUNTERBURY

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote

[e] ...seken straunge londes

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendered is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with open ye

(So priketh hem nature in hir corages),

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

And palmeres for to seken straunge londes;

And specially from every shires ende

Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,

The hooly blisful martir for to seke,

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

[f] Society

Bilfil that in that seson on a day,

In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay

Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage

To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,

At nyght was come into that hostelrye

Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye,

Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle

In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes wer they alle,

That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde.

The chambres and the stables weren wyde,

And wel we weren esed atte beste.

And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste,

[g] Knyght

So hadde I spoken with hem everichon

That I was of hir felaweshipe anon,

And made forward erly for to ryse,

To take oure wey ther as I yow devyse.

But nathelees whil I have tyme and space,

Er that I ferther in this tale pace,

Me thynketh it acordaunt to resoun

To telle yow al the condicioun

Of ech of hem, so as it seemed to me,

And whiche they weren, and of what degree,

And eek in what array that they were inne;

And at a knyght than wol I first bigynne.

[1] Geoffrey Chaucer [Larry Dean Benson, ed.], The Riverside Chaucer [3rd Ed.] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 23-24.

[h] Blake's pilgrims