In Honor of Poetry Month: Geoffrey Chaucer

Crossposted from Blogetary:

It gets forgotten sometimes, I think, that most great stories from before a certain time were written in verse. So, in celebrating National Poetry Month, we're not just celebrating free verse, sonnets and haikus, we're also celebrating great authors from the past such as Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare and Chaucer.

Geoffrey Chaucer lived at the end of the 14th century (1343 to 1400) and is known as the "Father of English Literature" for several reasons. One was that instead of writing in French (the language of the educated and aristocrats) or Latin (the language of the educated and the Church) he wrote in English (or Middle English). He wrote in the vernacular of the people. And he also developed different types of meter and rhyme and told stories of the people. You can read more about Geoffrey Chaucer here.

In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, he has a framing tale of people from all walks of life at that time traveling together in the good spring weather to go on a pilgrimage to a holy site, as people did in those days. These people were a nun, knight, miller, lawyer, wife, summoner, friar, parson, wife, pardoner, clerk, physician, yeoman, merchant, cook and manciple (and maybe a few others as well).

Within this framing tale are the tales told by each pilgrim as they go on their way. Some morality tales, some comedic, some are rather raunchy, and some are serious. Below is a first section of The Prologue, which describes the setting and the characters in this pilgrimage before going onto the individual tale. The verse on the left is in Middle English, while the verse on the right is in modern English. To read The Prologue in its entirety, go here.

The Canterbury Tales : Prologue

Here bygynneth the Book of the Tales of Caunterbury

Here begins the Book of the Tales of Canterbury

1: Whan that aprill with his shoures soote 2: The droghte of march hath perced to the roote, 3: And bathed every veyne in swich licour 4: Of which vertu engendred is the flour; 5: Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth 6: Inspired hath in every holt and heeth 7: Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne 8: Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne, 9: And smale foweles maken melodye, 10: That slepen al the nyght with open ye 11: (so priketh hem nature in hir corages); 12: Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, 13: And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes, 14: To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes; 15: And specially from every shires ende 16: Of engelond to caunterbury they wende, 17: The hooly blisful martir for to seke, 18: That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

When April with his showers sweet with fruit The drought of March has pierced unto the root And bathed each vein with liquor that has power To generate therein and sire the flower; When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath, Quickened again, in every holt and heath, The tender shoots and buds, and the young sun Into the Ram one half his course has run, And many little birds make melody That sleep through all the night with open eye (So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)- Then do folk long to go on pilgrimage, And palmers to go seeking out strange strands, To distant shrines well known in sundry lands. And specially from every shire's end Of England they to Canterbury wend, The holy blessed martyr there to seek Who helped them when they lay so ill and weal

I've never tried it, but I imagine telling an entire story in verse (or writing a play in verse) would (to put it mildly) take some work. Maybe one day I'll try it, a really short story, more like a flash story really. Well, we'll see.