¡Descarga The Canterbury Tales: Chaucer's Rhyming Masterpiece - Prof. Carretero González y más Apuntes en PDF de Idioma Inglés solo en Docsity! THE CANTERBURY TALES Except for two prose tales, Chaucer^resents The Canterbury Tales in verse. Tjigjneter varíes, although many lines are iniambic pentameterrMowever. metric classifícation depends ofte^oñwhether the reader uses Míddle Englrsírpronunciations. Even then, it may be difficult to determine whether Chaucer intended a syllable to be pronounced or skipped as silent. A further problem is that scribes copying his original manuscript may have deleted or inserted syllables. Most of the prologues and the tales of the pilgrims consist of a series ofrhyming couplets (units of two lines, each about the same length, with end rhyme). The opening lines of the work in the general prologue demónstrate the couplet pattern. The rhyming pairs of words in each couplet are in alternating blue and red type. 1 Whan that Aprille, with hise 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 swete breeth 6 Inspired hath in every holt and heeth 7 The tendré croppes, and the yonge sonne 8 Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne, 9 And smale foweles maken melodye, 10 That slepen al the nyght with open eye- 11 So prikeíh 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 Caunturbury they wende, 17 The hooly blisful mártir for the seke 18 That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke. Some tales, however, use a different rhyme scheme. For example, "The Lawyer's Tale," "The Prioress's Tale" and "The Clerk's Tale" are in rhyme royal, in which stanzas of seven lines in iambic pentameter have a rhyme scheme of ababbcc, as in the following stanza from "The Prioress's Tale": a Lady! thy bounty, thy magnificence, b Thy virtue, and thy great humility, a There may no tongue express in no science: b For sometimes, Lady! ere men pray to thee, b Thou go'st before, of thy benignity, c And gettest us the light, through thy prayere, c To guiden us unto thy son so dear. In depicting the Canterbury pilgrims, Chaucer presents realistic descriptions that exhibit his understanding of the human drama and the foibles and eccentricities of its participants. Using concise and specifíc language, he enables the reader to see or hear the squire carving meat for his father, the prioress crying wheñ sKé sees a mouse ensnared, the monk riding horses with bridles that jingle, and the wife of Bath wearing hose of scarlet red. In "The Reeve's Tale," Chaucer tells us that Simkin is a bully with a bald head who can play pipes, fish, and wrestle. In "The Man of Law's Tale," he tells us that the eyes of the evil knight pop from their sockets after he tells a lie. In "The Miller's Tale," he tells us that Absalom gains revenge by ramming a red-hot poker between the buttocks of Nicholas. Among the pilgrims are the learned, the religious, the worldly, the romantic, the practical, the idealistic, the merry, the irreverent. The pilgrims come from the middle class but vary in their personal backgrounds and occupations. As a group, they are a microcosm of the English society that flourished beyond the palé of the highborn. However, the characters in the pilgrims' stories include royáis as well as commoners. Thus, in The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer presents the whole range of humanity, a rarity in a day when most writers centered their stories primarily on kings and queens and legendary héroes. The host, Harry Bailly, plays a crucial role in The Canterbury Tales. With his questions and comments, he stimulates conversation that helps to reveal the personalities and attitudes of the pilgrims. Generally, the tales the pilgrims tell reflect the attitudes and beliefs of the tellers. Chaucer's most famous work, the Cahterbury Tales (written in the late 1380s), is a collection of stories of various kinds derived mainly from Italian and other European sources drawn together by the notion of a pilgrimage. In the Middle Ages it was not uncommon for people of different social classes to join together as pilgrims as they would not elsewhere in ufe. So we hear fírstly the narrator's description of most of the group in a satirical and often extremely amusing manner, in the General Prologue. Secondly we hear pilgrims tell stories to each other in an appropriate style for their characters after they have offered their own unique prologues (the Wife of Bath's is particularly interesting and shows an almost proto-feminist attitude). Usually the tales are popular or well known stories to which Chaucer adds or removes details to suit his purpose. There is a great mixture of serious and comical, sacred and profane here though it should be noted that the writer added a retraction at the end of his (in fact incomplete) Tales to reduce the chance of vengeance from God. This seems wise añer the images of hot pokers going where hot pokers should certainly not go and other lewdness in "The Miller's Tale" and elsewhere. The language is very different to our own in the sense that it has more French roots that English has now lost so it is advisable to think of the lines as being spoken with a French accent at the end of words and an Anglo-Saxon grit in their middles. 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