Whan that Aprille, with hise 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 swete 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 Caunturbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for the seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.
I can't boast very extensive knowledge of Chaucer, but I do have some fond memories from the Canterbury tales in the Middle English course at "hovedfag", way back. Our lecturer, an expert on northern English dialects had until then seemed like a rather stern sort, prone to giving back intonation exercises with the scathing comment: "Middling!". Or worse. But for some reason, Chaucer brought out his great sense of humour (albeit of the dry kind), and he enthused at length about the birds in the prologue here, who slept "with open eye", i.e. one eye open and one shut (hilarious!), and the Wife of Bath, who was "ywympled wel" (line 472) - imagining her headgear brought great amusement. Well, this was 1992, we weren't used to much.
Another fond personal Chaucerian memory is of course the first page of my favourite author David Lodge's novel Small World (1984), where he starts off with a modern language version of the lines above. The novel is about the great migration of academics in the summer season, like pilgrims they fly hither and tither on conferences all over the globe. This was obviously when university travel budgets were considerably more generous than now.
Aprille is of course also exam season - tomorrow we have orals. My listening tests are ready, I wonder if my cadets are.
