Medieval Literature Class
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete 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 strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially fram 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.
Bifil that in that seson on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay
Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
To Canterbury 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 were 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,
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.
Developing Your Thoughts
Even with an understanding of the prose sense of the passage, it may be as well to read it aloud to yourself at this stage. Real possession of a text necessarily involves impressing it on your inner ear, hearing the way in which it moves. You might profit from having the poem read to you again.
prologue.mp3 (1.5MB, 1 m 37 s, 128kbps, mono).
When you try to read it aloud with the recording, you will notice two things: (i) that the long vowel sounds of Modern English have changed from their Middle English equivalents; and (ii) that the passage is written in an iambic pentameter. The simplest way to pronounce Middle English is to listen to, and imitate, an experienced reader. The same is true of hearing the metre: listen to the recording, and make your own reading. The feature common to almost each line is the presence of five stresses, normally arranged in an iambic pattern. Reading the lines in this way reveals that the final 'e' of, say, 'sweete' in line 5 must be pronounced as an unstressed syllable. It also reveals that some instances of final 'e' are not sounded, through elision with the vowel sound beginning the subsequent word, as in 'droghte of', in line 2.
We are now in a position to start thinking about the style of the passage. On page 1 of this class various elements of style were listed. Practical Criticism has no formula, by which one can simply list a set of stylistic resources; each text will make its own invitations, and exert its own demands, by combining these resources in distinctive ways. One handy tip for producing a coherent commentary of a text is to read over the passage carefully, with an eye to what feature of style has highest profile. This will obviously differ in each text. Try reading the passage again: what strikes you most forcibly about its style?
The pages that follow offer one way into a coherent reading. There will be others, and you might like to make your own notes at each step, in response to the question posed at the end of each page. Comparing the reading you arrive at with the reading proposed here will be interesting.
©James Simpson 2000
