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
Consider the rhyme pattern here. Rhyme is an audible linguistic patterning, and so a figure of speech. If we take our bearings from the syntax, then we will focus on the rhyme at the key syntactic break. While rhyme often serves as a kind of background music to poetry, it will often also have thematic significance. This is true of the 'corages'/ 'pilgrimages' rhyme, since that rhyme puts the natural world into relation with the cultural world: 'corages' signifies the vital spirits or sexual desire of the birds, while 'pilgrimages' designates a specifically human, cultural practice. The rhyme puts the two into relationship by suggesting that the human, cultural world of religious practice also takes its impetus from nature. Religion and nature are not wholly disparate practices, so this sentence would suggest. The final rhyme on the homophones 'seke' and 'seeke' (a rime riche) implies the same thing: one seeks the saint (here Thomas Becket) to thank him for having cured the sick body.
Thinking about rhyme might provoke us to see that the whole passage is in couplets (later known as heroic couplets), a form introduced into English poetry by Chaucer. This form was designed for narrative poems, capable as it is of the easy forward step of narrative, with the possibility of enjambement, as well as, when required, the more formal effects produced by caesura and end-stopping. The easy sweep of forward movement in this passage, for example, is suggested by the enjambements of lines 5-8, while the more formal, end-stopped possibility is exploited by lines 11 and 12.
Can you isolate other stylistic differences within the first sentence?
©James Simpson 2000
