077
The Canterbury Tales

At the moment I am enjoying re-reading The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, born 1343. It takes a bit of time getting into the old English but it is well worth the trouble. I find that my knowledge of Swedish is a great help, for many of the old Scandinavian ( Viking) words were still used in English, and those that later changed their spelling and pronunciation are still to be seen in Chaucer in all their stark vitality. The stories are wide ranging and representative of many dimensions of Late Medieval life. They are also highly descriptive of the ordinary details of life at the time ( The late 14th century ) It is the rough English of the common man - the field labourers and farmers and urban artisans, who carried on speaking the old English tongue; whilst the court, the legal system, the educational establishment, and the Manorial houses spoke Norman French.

Without the academic and social pressures to conform, the vernacular was soon shorn of the old-fashioned grammatical baggage, of multi-conjugational verb forms, and declensional complications of the noun, and in doing so, became the vigorous, forceful, uncomplicated language system that later was to conquer the world. We have a lot to thank Geoffrey Chaucer for, in that he helped to stabilize our tongue, and helped to render it acceptable as the language of literature and the court, and later the main language of the whole world. His brilliance as a poet is indisputable, I will give you a sample. Here are the first eighteen lines:

The Canterbury Tales.

The Prologue

What that April with his showers sweet

The drought of March has pierced to the root,

And bathed every vine in such licquour

By which virtue engendered is the flower;

When Zephirus also with his sweete breath

Has quickened in every holt and heath

The tender croppes, and the yonge sun

Has in the Ram his half course run,

And small fowls maken melodye,

That sleep all the nyght with open eye

( So incitees them nature in their hearts);

Then longen folk to go on pilgrimages,

And palmers for to seek foreign shores,

To distant shrines, known in sondry lands;

And specially from every shires end

Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,

The holy blissful martir for to seek,

That them did helpen when that they were sick.

I have deliberately modernised a large amount of the text.

After 650 years these words remain as a testament to a great mind - to a human soul such as you and I. No trace survives of his bodily frame - yet his spirit goes on. His poetic presence remains to be analyzed by generations of British schoolchildren and scholars of all nationalities.

It seems that Chaucer's "smale foweles will maken melodye" ( "Small birds will make melody" ) till the end of time, long But, I ask, does it matter if you and I are not around to witness what happens in the world - the progress forward for human-kind - the unfolding drama of the story of man - does it matter ? Should we concern ourselves? Think about the many people that you have known - but who are now dead. Many you have already forgotten? Some you can just about remember if you concentrate hard enough. Does posterity have any meaning for them? Do the events of today have any meaning for some poor farmer from the Korean countryside who died during the Korean war? The answer is a resounding NO! The dead have no connection - no interest, and no awareness of the on-going world - it is a religious fiction to assume otherwise. When we die we perish and our meaning or significance is eliminated. Then - it is all of NO CONSEQUENCE - in fact - it is already of no consequence now - but we cant stand the pain of facing up to that unpalatable fact! And what do we leave behind us?

Writings? Inventions? Children? Creations?

They too into the dust descend

Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie,

sans writings, sans inventions, sans catamarans,

sans creations, sans children,

sans wine, sans Animal Rescue Centres,

sans song ,sans singer, and - sans end !

(With apologies to the old tentmaker!)

Forgive me for being so saturnine and brooding. I suppose I have got to admit, that you only need to scratch me superficially to find philosophical morbidity just below the surface!