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Rediscovering Chaucer
08 October 2005
Several weeks ago, Susan and I rode our bicycles along the Georgian Trail to Thornbury - about 30 km - wandered around, had lunch, shopped, then rode back. It was a nice day all in all: exercise, natural beauty and a romantic day together that ended in a bottle of wine shared on the front porch watching the sun set over Blue Mountain.
One of the places I always visit when I'm in Thornbury is Jessica's Book Nook, mostly because she has a large section of sale items in the back, including a wall of bargain-priced Penguin books. I'm a sucker for sale bins and one full of Penguins is a literary treasure-hunter's pot of gold.
I have a real soft spot for Penguin books because they carry on printing classical literature; the great works of the past like Dante, Shakespeare, Melville, Tolstoy, Orwell, Dostoyevsky, Wilde, Cervantes, Conrad, Kipling - it's a tradition of printing great works that reaches back to Caxton. Who else prints Geoffery of Monmouth? Or at least in a handy, back-pocket edition you can carry with you? Plus they print modern works, including many international authors such as Asturias and Fuentes. Without Penguin, we'd be very much worse off and intellectually poorer.
And they're ever so much better when they're on sale. I have hundreds of Penguin titles in my library, including some paperbacks dating back to the 1950s.
Anyway, I picked up a few of these bargain Penguins as is my wont, including a version of the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer (edited by Jill Mann; a walloping 1,250 pages). I have a couple of versions of this work, but it's like Shakespeare: you can never have too many editions. The notes, the introduction, the translations are all different, and each casts a new light on the original work. A library without Chaucer is almost as barren as a library without Shakespeare, and I always believe there's welcome room for another edition any collection.
I didn't open the book until a month or more after our bicycle trip. I was arranging a couple of bookshelves to accomodate the growing overflow and decided to take the book outside to join Susan on the deck, maybe read a little of it, perhaps just the introduction and historical notes, while we had a glass of wine as the summer light faded.
That was when I noticed - to my chagrin - that the Canterbury Tales I had purchased were not - as in most of my versions - in easy, modern English. They were in the original - Chaucer's own 14th century language: Middle English. I've never tried to read more than a dozen or so lines of Old or Middle English, and failed at the effort. It's as foreign to me as Basque.
Or so I thought. A cursory glance over Chaucer's original lines may be intimidating, but I decided that, since I'd already paid for the book, I might as well make the effort to read a little bit. I had expected to get not much further than I had in the past as I opened the cover. However, I was a little surprised to find I could, with a lot of cross-checking of footnotes and endnotes, read quite a lot of it, understand and actually enjoy it. Slowly, clumsily, true, but it wasn't nearly as foreign as I had experienced in the past. In fact, as I read, I seemed to get the rhythm of the words, and it became easier the more I pursued it.
I read the the description of the Clerk in the general prologue, and it seemed to resemble my own life in many ways, an echo across the ages.... lying in bed with a tottering stack of books beside me as I read late into the night...
And I read my own spending habits - books, always books - and of someone else who is eager to learn and to share that learning with others:
Of course, Chaucer's clerk was in the church - the centre of learning back then - and prays for the souls of his benefactors (And bisily gan for the soules preye/ Of hem that yaf hym wherwith to scoleye) - and that's a little out of kilter with my own secular life. But that aside, the portrait fits.
Chaucer's tales are surprisingly modern. With a little dress-up, they'd be entirely suitable for modern readers. Chaucer wrote about humans and their foibles: sex, money, greed, lust, thievery, cheating, silliness and wisdom, violence and love. What he really shows us is that human nature hasn't really changed all that much in six centuries, despite all those trappings we think of as civilization and modernity.
Chaucer's language - Middle English - still owed a lot to its Germanic heritage, but it also seems to have spun in a bit of Norman French, Danish Celtic and Briton - and a little Latin, too. Like today's English, it was an eclectic, vital language, a polyglot of other tongues. In reading it I was surprised at how many words, how many phrases of 600-plus years ago were still in use today, and how old a common turn of phrase may be.
Some words looked odd, but were understandable when pronounced: the spelling has changed but the words themselves remain the same: leves for leaves; squyer for squire, myrie for merry, desyr for desire - it was amazing how much clearer it became when I spoke it aloud, or at least spoke it in my head, not merely read it. It also helped to learn that the vowels are pronounced like most European-Romance languages: ah, eh, ee, oh, oo.
The printed word is a treasure, but Chaucer was written to be read aloud, and it is evident when you do so. In his day, perhaps five percent were literate: oral traditions were still strong and the few books were often read aloud to an audience. Remember, too, that this before the printing press - books were laboriously copied by hand. Gutenberg didn't invent the printing press until 40 after Chaucer died. It wasn't until 1476 that William Caxton printed the first book in England. Caxton's first edition of Chaucer was printed that year, too, then reprinted in 1483 - thanks to him we can still enjoy Chaucer today.
Other words were totally alien: usaunt (accustomed), popper (dagger), piled (bald), clepen (called), lemman (sweetheart), cokenay (sissy) and many others. A glossary - or at the very least good explanatory footnotes - is a necessity for the layperson. It's no unlike learning a new language, but it's somewhat closer to learning Spanish when you already know Italian: the foundations are there.
The first trick I learned - thanks to the Internet and an afternoon spent surfing Chaucerian sites - was to pronounce the vowels in a way closer to what Chaucer would have. Reading him aloud, Chaucer sounds to me a bit like a dour Yorkshireman. This was before the Great Vowel Shift that happened prior to Shakespeare's time. The 'e' at the end of the word is often expressed as in Spanish (so that melle - today's mill - might be pronounced "meh-leh" - but there are some rules and exceptions you need to learn to know when to say the final 'e' or not...).
The second trick was to find an "interlinear" translation - not an interpretation in modern verse or prose - but rather one that simply translates the words into their modern equivalent without any effort to retain Chaucer's rhyme and rhythm. This makes word recognition easier because you quickly learn the variants - wyf for wife, hadde for had, deed for dead, stoon for stone, alleye for ally, and so on.
Buried on one of my bookshelves was an old copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: An Interlinear Translation by Vincent Hopper, one of those yard-sale books you bring home then bury on a shelf. It was so old the binding was splitting, and pages falling out, so I removed the cover and dessicated glue, and put a wire binding on it so it would open flat. Now I can even read it while I walk to work! (Yes, not only do I walk to work, but I frequently read while I'm doing it.)
You can also find interlinear translations on this Chaucer site and a few others. I really recommend them as a place to start. I also recommend you find any of the numerous sites that have audio clips, either of the sounds or readings. Listening to someone read a short passage while you read along with it is a very good way to get to learn how Chaucer pronounced his words. (Yes, I'm aware there are some scholarly debates over the sounds, but that's something for more advanced students to worry about).
I use Hopper's work for practice. It makes reading easier because I can look down a single short line to find an unfamiliar word or use. But I actually like the fat Penguin because it has all the tales, oodles of explanatory notes, and almost enough footnotes to allow a dunce like myself read the works with some sense of confidence. Besides, a big book has its own aesthetics and there's a great sense of satisfaction in reading a passage this way.
So here I am, in my mid-50s, re-discovering Chaucer, whom I had not read much of in at least 30 years (and really didn't appreciate back then). I'm learning to read him in his own tongue, not the modern variants I was accustomed to, and that is opening a new window on the works. And, of course, I'm having a wonderful time learning about his age, about our language, and about the man himself.
Why should we read Chaucer today? Aside, that is, for the historical context and the ties with our literary past. - they're assumed. Well, because we learn from Chaucer; we learn about ourselves by peering into this 'distant mirror' of his. Because he's entertaining and funny, scolding and sarcastic, preachy and iconoclastic and very keen in his observations. And because even if it's a rough passage, reading him in the original teaches us a lot about our own language.
Chaucer basically gave us modern English. He set the tone and form of the language that would become what we speak today, including our ecletic tendency to incorporate words from other languages (although it was Caxton who cemented today's English into our cultural consciousness by commiting the form to print). It was Chaucer who first coined the idea of "the King's English" in his Treatise on the Astrolabe.
And finally, we read because we learn. We need to keep learning through all of our life else we cease to grow. Once we stop learning, we start to die. As Thoreau once wrote, "he who ceases to be a student, never was a student." Chaucer is merely one step along a lifelong journey. As he wrote in the Parliament of Fowles:
One of the places I always visit when I'm in Thornbury is Jessica's Book Nook, mostly because she has a large section of sale items in the back, including a wall of bargain-priced Penguin books. I'm a sucker for sale bins and one full of Penguins is a literary treasure-hunter's pot of gold.
I have a real soft spot for Penguin books because they carry on printing classical literature; the great works of the past like Dante, Shakespeare, Melville, Tolstoy, Orwell, Dostoyevsky, Wilde, Cervantes, Conrad, Kipling - it's a tradition of printing great works that reaches back to Caxton. Who else prints Geoffery of Monmouth? Or at least in a handy, back-pocket edition you can carry with you? Plus they print modern works, including many international authors such as Asturias and Fuentes. Without Penguin, we'd be very much worse off and intellectually poorer.
And they're ever so much better when they're on sale. I have hundreds of Penguin titles in my library, including some paperbacks dating back to the 1950s.
Anyway, I picked up a few of these bargain Penguins as is my wont, including a version of the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer (edited by Jill Mann; a walloping 1,250 pages). I have a couple of versions of this work, but it's like Shakespeare: you can never have too many editions. The notes, the introduction, the translations are all different, and each casts a new light on the original work. A library without Chaucer is almost as barren as a library without Shakespeare, and I always believe there's welcome room for another edition any collection.
I didn't open the book until a month or more after our bicycle trip. I was arranging a couple of bookshelves to accomodate the growing overflow and decided to take the book outside to join Susan on the deck, maybe read a little of it, perhaps just the introduction and historical notes, while we had a glass of wine as the summer light faded.
That was when I noticed - to my chagrin - that the Canterbury Tales I had purchased were not - as in most of my versions - in easy, modern English. They were in the original - Chaucer's own 14th century language: Middle English. I've never tried to read more than a dozen or so lines of Old or Middle English, and failed at the effort. It's as foreign to me as Basque.
Or so I thought. A cursory glance over Chaucer's original lines may be intimidating, but I decided that, since I'd already paid for the book, I might as well make the effort to read a little bit. I had expected to get not much further than I had in the past as I opened the cover. However, I was a little surprised to find I could, with a lot of cross-checking of footnotes and endnotes, read quite a lot of it, understand and actually enjoy it. Slowly, clumsily, true, but it wasn't nearly as foreign as I had experienced in the past. In fact, as I read, I seemed to get the rhythm of the words, and it became easier the more I pursued it.
I read the the description of the Clerk in the general prologue, and it seemed to resemble my own life in many ways, an echo across the ages.... lying in bed with a tottering stack of books beside me as I read late into the night...
Quote
For hym was levere have at his beddes heed/ For he would rather have at the head of his bed
Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed,/ Twenty books, bound in black or red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophie/ Of Aristotle and his philosophy
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie./ Than rich robes, or a fiddle, or an elegant psaltery.
Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed,/ Twenty books, bound in black or red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophie/ Of Aristotle and his philosophy
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie./ Than rich robes, or a fiddle, or an elegant psaltery.
And I read my own spending habits - books, always books - and of someone else who is eager to learn and to share that learning with others:
Quote
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre;/ Nevertheless he had but little gold in his strongbox;
But al that he myghte of his freendes hente,/ But all that he could get from his friends,
On bookes and on lernynge he it spente,/ He spent on books and on learning,
... Of studie took he moost cure and moost heede./ ...He took most care and paid most heed to study.
...And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche./ ...And gladly would he learn and gladly teach.
But al that he myghte of his freendes hente,/ But all that he could get from his friends,
On bookes and on lernynge he it spente,/ He spent on books and on learning,
... Of studie took he moost cure and moost heede./ ...He took most care and paid most heed to study.
...And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche./ ...And gladly would he learn and gladly teach.
Of course, Chaucer's clerk was in the church - the centre of learning back then - and prays for the souls of his benefactors (And bisily gan for the soules preye/ Of hem that yaf hym wherwith to scoleye) - and that's a little out of kilter with my own secular life. But that aside, the portrait fits.
Chaucer's tales are surprisingly modern. With a little dress-up, they'd be entirely suitable for modern readers. Chaucer wrote about humans and their foibles: sex, money, greed, lust, thievery, cheating, silliness and wisdom, violence and love. What he really shows us is that human nature hasn't really changed all that much in six centuries, despite all those trappings we think of as civilization and modernity.
Chaucer's language - Middle English - still owed a lot to its Germanic heritage, but it also seems to have spun in a bit of Norman French, Danish Celtic and Briton - and a little Latin, too. Like today's English, it was an eclectic, vital language, a polyglot of other tongues. In reading it I was surprised at how many words, how many phrases of 600-plus years ago were still in use today, and how old a common turn of phrase may be.
Some words looked odd, but were understandable when pronounced: the spelling has changed but the words themselves remain the same: leves for leaves; squyer for squire, myrie for merry, desyr for desire - it was amazing how much clearer it became when I spoke it aloud, or at least spoke it in my head, not merely read it. It also helped to learn that the vowels are pronounced like most European-Romance languages: ah, eh, ee, oh, oo.
The printed word is a treasure, but Chaucer was written to be read aloud, and it is evident when you do so. In his day, perhaps five percent were literate: oral traditions were still strong and the few books were often read aloud to an audience. Remember, too, that this before the printing press - books were laboriously copied by hand. Gutenberg didn't invent the printing press until 40 after Chaucer died. It wasn't until 1476 that William Caxton printed the first book in England. Caxton's first edition of Chaucer was printed that year, too, then reprinted in 1483 - thanks to him we can still enjoy Chaucer today.
Other words were totally alien: usaunt (accustomed), popper (dagger), piled (bald), clepen (called), lemman (sweetheart), cokenay (sissy) and many others. A glossary - or at the very least good explanatory footnotes - is a necessity for the layperson. It's no unlike learning a new language, but it's somewhat closer to learning Spanish when you already know Italian: the foundations are there.
The first trick I learned - thanks to the Internet and an afternoon spent surfing Chaucerian sites - was to pronounce the vowels in a way closer to what Chaucer would have. Reading him aloud, Chaucer sounds to me a bit like a dour Yorkshireman. This was before the Great Vowel Shift that happened prior to Shakespeare's time. The 'e' at the end of the word is often expressed as in Spanish (so that melle - today's mill - might be pronounced "meh-leh" - but there are some rules and exceptions you need to learn to know when to say the final 'e' or not...).
The second trick was to find an "interlinear" translation - not an interpretation in modern verse or prose - but rather one that simply translates the words into their modern equivalent without any effort to retain Chaucer's rhyme and rhythm. This makes word recognition easier because you quickly learn the variants - wyf for wife, hadde for had, deed for dead, stoon for stone, alleye for ally, and so on.
Buried on one of my bookshelves was an old copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: An Interlinear Translation by Vincent Hopper, one of those yard-sale books you bring home then bury on a shelf. It was so old the binding was splitting, and pages falling out, so I removed the cover and dessicated glue, and put a wire binding on it so it would open flat. Now I can even read it while I walk to work! (Yes, not only do I walk to work, but I frequently read while I'm doing it.)
You can also find interlinear translations on this Chaucer site and a few others. I really recommend them as a place to start. I also recommend you find any of the numerous sites that have audio clips, either of the sounds or readings. Listening to someone read a short passage while you read along with it is a very good way to get to learn how Chaucer pronounced his words. (Yes, I'm aware there are some scholarly debates over the sounds, but that's something for more advanced students to worry about).
I use Hopper's work for practice. It makes reading easier because I can look down a single short line to find an unfamiliar word or use. But I actually like the fat Penguin because it has all the tales, oodles of explanatory notes, and almost enough footnotes to allow a dunce like myself read the works with some sense of confidence. Besides, a big book has its own aesthetics and there's a great sense of satisfaction in reading a passage this way.
So here I am, in my mid-50s, re-discovering Chaucer, whom I had not read much of in at least 30 years (and really didn't appreciate back then). I'm learning to read him in his own tongue, not the modern variants I was accustomed to, and that is opening a new window on the works. And, of course, I'm having a wonderful time learning about his age, about our language, and about the man himself.
Why should we read Chaucer today? Aside, that is, for the historical context and the ties with our literary past. - they're assumed. Well, because we learn from Chaucer; we learn about ourselves by peering into this 'distant mirror' of his. Because he's entertaining and funny, scolding and sarcastic, preachy and iconoclastic and very keen in his observations. And because even if it's a rough passage, reading him in the original teaches us a lot about our own language.
Chaucer basically gave us modern English. He set the tone and form of the language that would become what we speak today, including our ecletic tendency to incorporate words from other languages (although it was Caxton who cemented today's English into our cultural consciousness by commiting the form to print). It was Chaucer who first coined the idea of "the King's English" in his Treatise on the Astrolabe.
And finally, we read because we learn. We need to keep learning through all of our life else we cease to grow. Once we stop learning, we start to die. As Thoreau once wrote, "he who ceases to be a student, never was a student." Chaucer is merely one step along a lifelong journey. As he wrote in the Parliament of Fowles:
Quote
The life so short, the craft so long to learn...
