Geoffrey Chaucer
STEVE EMBER: Middle English sounds like modern English. But it is very difficult to understand now. Many written works from this period have survived. Perhaps the most famous was written by Geoffrey Chaucer, a poet who lived in London and died there in fourteen hundred. Chaucer’s most famous work is “The Canterbury Tales,” written more than six hundred years ago.
“The Canterbury Tales” is a collection of poems about different people traveling to the town of Canterbury. Listen for a few moments as Warren Scheer reads the beginning of Chaucer’s famous “Canterbury Tales.”
WARREN SCHEER:
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 heath…
Now listen as Mister Scheer reads the same sentences again, but this time in Modern English.
WARREN SHEER:
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,
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2013-11-25
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