The opening lines of The Canterbury Tales

duessa

The General Prologue

      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 halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(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 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.

A Modern English translation:
When April with his sweet showers has
pierced the drought of March to the root,
and bathed every vein in such moisture
as has power to bring forth the flower;
when, also, Zephyrus with his sweet breath
has breathed spirit into the tender new shoots
in every wood and meadow, and the young sun
has run half his course in the sign of the Ram,
and small birds sing melodies and
sleep with their eyes open all the night—
so Nature pricks them in their hearts:
then people long to go on pilgrimages,
and palmers long to seek strange shores
and far-off shrines known in various lands,
and, especially, from the ends of every shire
in England they come to Canterbury,
to seek the holy, blissful martyr
who helped them when they were sick.

[ 本帖最后由 duessa 于 2006-9-20 11:49 PM 编辑 ]

duessa

A few facts about Chaucer
       
                      Born in London in about 1343 and died on 25 October, 1400. Buried in Westminster Abey, in a place later known as the Poets’ Corner.

        During the Hundred Years’ War, Chaucer was once captured (in November 1359) and ransomed (in March 1360) for £16—about £5,000 nowadays—which was a little less than the ransom paid out for Sir Robert de Clynton’s war-horse.

        At a time, the income of Chaucer and his wife reached around £99 a year—say £30,000 in today’s money. No wonder Chaucer could afford to collect a considerable library. Books were of course very scarce and expensive before the invention of printing; few households possessed more than one. Chaucer had sixty—a good deal more than many an Oxford and Cambridge college could boast.

        Led a busy life of politics and people often wonder how he could have possibly had time for literary writing.

        The first English poet that used “heroic couplet”, the first great English poet that used Middle English at a time when people had much doubt about it, and was called father of English poetry by Dryden.

Read a bit The Canterbury Tales these days. I love these opening lines a lot for they are so beautiful. And it is great fun to find that though ages may change, life remains the same. Chaucer makes a vivid description of people of all classes and their daily life. Not so great as Shakespeare partly owing to his focus only on the comic side of life, while the latter describes both the comic and tragic sides.

[ 本帖最后由 duessa 于 2006-9-20 11:51 PM 编辑 ]

怀抱花朵的孩子

few households possessed more than one. Chaucer had sixty—a good deal more than many an Oxford and Cambridge college could boast.

That is interesting, I always thought Chaucer a farmer or somebody like that and can read few books.
I am interestd about what kind of books Chaucer read and like. Is there any record?

kokho

The moderators of this website are as resourceful as literature librarian...

duessa

I can't find any record about Chaucer's book collection. I only know that he must be familiar with such books as Dante's Divina Commedia, Boccaccio's Filostrato and Teseide, and etc. Actually, he was a man of exceptionally wide reading: he read and spoke French and Italian as well as Latin, was expert in astronomy, and knew a bit of physics, history, theology, philosophy, medicine, law, and even alchemy.

[ 本帖最后由 duessa 于 2006-9-22 10:15 PM 编辑 ]

怀抱花朵的孩子

Chaucer must be read with an eye to the Norman-French Trouveres, of whom he is the best representative in English. He had great powers of invention. As in Shakspeare, his characters represent classes, but in a different manner; Shakspeare's characters are the representatives of the interior nature of humanity, in which some element has become so predominant as to destroy the health of the mind; whereas Chaucer's are rather representatives of classes of manners. He is therefore more led to individualize in a mere personal sense. Observe Chaucer's love of nature; and how happily the subject of his main work is chosen. When you reflect that the company in the Decameron have retired to a place of safety from the raging of a pestilence, their mirth provokes a sense of their unfeelingness; whereas in Chaucer nothing of this sort occurs, and the scheme of a party on a pilgrimage, with different ends and
occupations, aptly allows of the greatest variety of expression in the tales.

                                     ------------------From Literaray Remains by Coleridge.


Here Coleridge said "Shakspeare's characters are the representatives of the interior nature of humanity, in which some element has become so predominant as to destroy the health of the mind" and mention us to "Observe Chaucer's love of nature".
Actually in the second chapter of BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA Coleridge gave us many examples of great writers who have been of calm and tranquil temper in all that related to themselves, when he was discussing about Shakespeare he said:" Shakespeare's evenness and sweetness of temper were almost proverbial in his own age. That this did not arise from ignorance of his own comparative greatness, we have abundant proof in his Sonnets" and he quoted SONNET LXXXI.and Sonnet (S. LXXXVI.) to prove that Shakespeare knew clearly his literature contribution.But in Chauser's turn he just said :"Through all the works of Chaucer there reigns a cheerfulness, a manly hilarity which makes it almost impossible to doubt a correspondent habit of feeling in the author himself." He just mentioned the cheerfulness in the works of Chauser, and through which concluded that Chauser must have a correspondent habit of feeling.

From these two examples we can find there are great differences between Chauser and Shakespeare for Coleridge, even we can say some of which is in essence. So many writers and crtics think Shakespeare as the model of objective writing, but in Coleridge's opinion Chauser represented the highest level of natural writing, because Chauser himself is the Nature.

Romantic literature reverence Nature and Genius, these two concepts can not be separated, Coleridge think that "The sanity of the mind is between superstition with fanaticism on the one hand, and enthusiasm with indifference and a diseased slowness to action on the other." and commanding genius who can attemper these two kinds of state should have high ability of imagination and at the same time creative enthusiasm. But the last aim is Nature.

But I do think Coleridge and also many other critics have a tendency of apotheosizing Chauser and Shakespeare, I don't know what he really mean about the word "Nature" when he told us to "Observe Chaucer's love of nature".Maybe he was referring to the nature which we see and live in, but for Romantic criticism the word is far more than this.

I also found this paragraph from the same book.
"Shakspeare shaped his characters out of the nature within; but we cannot so safely say, out of his own nature as an individual person. No! this latter is itself but a 'natura naturata',--an effect, a product, not a power. It was Shakspeare's prerogative to have the universal, which is potentially in each particular, opened out to him, the 'homo generalis', not as an abstraction from observation of a variety of men, but as the substance capable of endless modifications, of which his own personal existence was but one, and to use this one as the eye that beheld the other, and as the tongue that could convey the discovery."

Coleridge have said that Natura naturata is "the sum total of the facts and phenomena of the senses"; it is nature "in the passive sense".

Actually Natura naturata is a Latin term coined in the middle ages, mainly used by Baruch Spinoza meaning "Nature natured", or "Nature already created".In BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA Coleridge have seriously animadvert Spinoza, but when he was talking about Shakespeare he nearlly unconsciously applied Spinoza's Philosophy term.

And he thought that the character Shakespeare created is 'homo generalis' but not Natura naturata.We also can say what he really reverence was Natura naturans-----nature doing what nature does. So we can say Coleridge's highest literature ideal is a writer whose writing is like nature create nature just like great Shakespeare.

But he didn't tell us how shakespeare achieved this kind of stature.

[ 本帖最后由 怀抱花朵的孩子 于 2006-10-11 06:21 PM 编辑 ]