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 its point of view. This sentence describes natural processes without reference to the point of view from which the speaker is positioned, or without any account of how the speaker came to know what he or she knows. The speaker has universal access both to the atmospheric heights of the earthly realm ('the yonge sonne / Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne'), as well as to its minute and lowly particulars ('every veyne' of plants), without losing his (or her) power of vision. In the main clause the action moves from the cosmos to more specific geographies, but geographies seen from a bird's eye view. At first pilgrims are seen moving across the whole hemisphere, before the view narrows to England, in which they move from all extremities of the island towards the religious centre of Canterbury.
We are now in a position to account for the structure and style of this sentence, with its representation of religious practice happening within a frame of natural cycles, and its account of specifically Christian practice within a world that is still described in the terms of classical, pagan religion. Out of all these elements of style, but out of its syntax especially, emerges a complex sense of the inter-relation between different fields of activity, the natural and the religious.
If all that is true of the first sentence, how do the remaining lines of this excerpt offer a stylistic contrast? Again, you might choose a stylistic feature of the second set of lines that has very high profile in order to generate the contrast.
©James Simpson 2000
