The Canterbury Tales 现代版.docx

1、The Canterbury Tales 现代版The Canterbury Tales -The General Prologue (Modern English Version)The Canterbury Tales -The General Prologue (Modern English Version) When in April the sweet showers fallAnd pierce the drought of March to the root, and allThe veins are bathed in liquor of such powerAs brings

2、 about the engendering of the flower,When also Zephyrus with his sweet breathExhales an air in every grove and heathUpon the tender shoots , and the young sunHis half-course in the sign of the Ram has run,And the small fowl are making melodyThat sleep away the night with open eye(So nature pricks th

3、em and their heart engages)Then people long to go on pilgrimagesAnd palmers long to seek the stranger strandsOf far-off saints, hallowed in sundry lands,And specially, from every shires endOf England, down to Canterbury they wendTo seek the holy blissful martyr, quickTo give his help to them when th

4、ey were sick,It happened in that season that one dayIn Southwark , at The Tabard, as I layReady to go on pilgrimages and startFor Canterbury, most devout at heart,At night there came into that hostelrySome nine and twenty in a companyOf sundry folk happening then to fallIn fellowship, and they were

5、pilgrims allThat towards Canterbury meant to ride,The rooms and stables of the inn were wide;They made us easy, all was of the best,And, briefly, when the sun had gone to rest,Id spoken to them all upon the tripAnd was soon one with them in fellowship,Pledged to rise early and to take the wayTo Cant

6、erbury, as you heard me say.But none the less, while I have time and space,Before my story takes a further pace,It seems a reasonable thing to sayWhat their condition was, the full arrayOf each of them, as it appeared to me,According to profession and degree,And what apparel they were riding in;And

7、at a Knight I therefore will begin.The Opening of Chaucers General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales: A Dyptych - Colin Wilcockson The opening thirty-four lines of the General Prologue set the scene, and divide into two equal halves. The first sixteen lines, commencing Whan that . . ., are concerned

8、with matters general: the renewal of nature in April with the simultaneous desire of men and women to set out on pilgrimages. The central two lines (17-18) are a rime riche (perfect rhymes on words that are different parts of speech). They state the object of the pilgrimage-the journey to the shrine

9、 of Thomas Becket:The hooly blisful martir for to seke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.The remaining sixteen lines, commencing Bifil that . . ., home in on a specific group of pilgrims: their reception at the Tabard Inn and their plans for the next day. Then follows a paragraph (II.

10、35-42) which is clearly separated from the foregoing by But nathelees. In it Chaucer explains that he will present the reader with character sketches of the individual pilgrims, including their social rank and their dress.The divisions I have indicated are reinforced by the scribe of the Ellesmere M

11、S. He reserves illuminated capital letters for particular indication. Thus, each new pilgrims description commences with a decorated initial letter: A knyght ther was . . . With hym ther was his sone a yong squier . . Qher was also a nonne . . . , and so on. When the descriptions are complete and Ch

12、aucer moves on to the more general narrative (II. 715-858), only the first capital of that entire 143-line passage is illuminated: Now have I toold you soothly . . . Yet at the beginning of the General Prologue we find the decorated capital at the first line: Whan that April . . . ; so, too, directl

13、y after the rime riche, at line 19: Bifil that in that season . . . ; and at line 35: But nathelees . . . . Thus the second sixteen-line section I have mentioned is separated, and the scribe draws our attention to a new beginning after line 34.This drawing of attention to structural configuration by

14、 coloured capitals is of a piece with the two successive uses of the device in sections XVI (last stanza) and XVII (first stanza) of Pearl, evidently to emphasize that section XV contains a cryptic six (rather than the usual five) stanzas. Apart from this extra decorated capital in section XVI only

15、the first capital letter of each section of Pearl is coloured. As each stanza has twelve lines, the five stanza per section form totals sixty lines per section. Section XV contains, however, seventy-two lines (i.e. six stanzas), unbroken by a new capital letter. But in section XVI an intrusive capit

16、al letter introduces the fifth stanza, drawing attention to the fact that there would have been a coloured capital there if the previous section had contained the regular five stanzas of the other nineteen sections of the poem. The next stanza again has a coloured capital, because that introduces se

17、ction XVII. It has often been pointed out that the resulting number of stanzas-101-is also (and surely more than coincidentally) the number of verse-paragraphs in another work by the same poet, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Some editors have, however, assumed that there was a non-authorial additi

18、on of a stanza in section XV of Pearl;(n1) but, as the last word of the elongated section XV is neuerpelese (nevertheless), a word taken up as the first word of section XVI, there would appear to be an allusion to the numerology. Furthermore, neuer pe les is the final phrase of every one of the six

19、stanzas of section XV. Had the intrusive capital occurred at stanza 6 of section XV, one might argue that the scribe, accustomed to a five-stanza section, anticipated a new section and painted a decorated capital. But its removal till later reinforces its cryptic significance. But nathelees (But nev

20、ertheless) is the phrase Chaucer also uses in line 35 of the General Prologue, perhaps, like the Pearl-poet, to alert his readers to the preceding number of lines.The opening thirty-four lines of the General Prologue set the scene, and divide into two equal halves. The first sixteen lines, commencin

21、g Whan that . . ., are concerned with matters general: the renewal of nature in April with the simultaneous desire of men and women to set out on pilgrimages. The central two lines (17-18) are a rime riche (perfect rhymes on words that are different parts of speech). They state the object of the pil

22、grimage-the journey to the shrine of Thomas Becket:The hooly blisful martir for to seke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.The remaining sixteen lines, commencing Bifil that . . ., home in on a specific group of pilgrims: their reception at the Tabard Inn and their plans for the next da

23、y. Then follows a paragraph (II. 35-42) which is clearly separated from the foregoing by But nathelees. In it Chaucer explains that he will present the reader with character sketches of the individual pilgrims, including their social rank and their dress.The divisions I have indicated are reinforced

24、 by the scribe of the Ellesmere MS. He reserves illuminated capital letters for particular indication. Thus, each new pilgrims description commences with a decorated initial letter: A knyght ther was . . . With hym ther was his sone a yong squier . . Qher was also a nonne . . . , and so on. When the

25、 descriptions are complete and Chaucer moves on to the more general narrative (II. 715-858), only the first capital of that entire 143-line passage is illuminated: Now have I toold you soothly . . . Yet at the beginning of the General Prologue we find the decorated capital at the first line: Whan th

26、at April . . . ; so, too, directly after the rime riche, at line 19: Bifil that in that season . . . ; and at line 35: But nathelees . . . . Thus the second sixteen-line section I have mentioned is separated, and the scribe draws our attention to a new beginning after line 34.This drawing of attenti

27、on to structural configuration by coloured capitals is of a piece with the two successive uses of the device in sections XVI (last stanza) and XVII (first stanza) of Pearl, evidently to emphasize that section XV contains a cryptic six (rather than the usual five) stanzas. Apart from this extra decor

28、ated capital in section XVI only the first capital letter of each section of Pearl is coloured. As each stanza has twelve lines, the five stanza per section form totals sixty lines per section. Section XV contains, however, seventy-two lines (i.e. six stanzas), unbroken by a new capital letter. But

29、in section XVI an intrusive capital letter introduces the fifth stanza, drawing attention to the fact that there would have been a coloured capital there if the previous section had contained the regular five stanzas of the other nineteen sections of the poem. The next stanza again has a coloured ca

30、pital, because that introduces section XVII. It has often been pointed out that the resulting number of stanzas-101-is also (and surely more than coincidentally) the number of verse-paragraphs in another work by the same poet, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Some editors have, however, assumed that

31、 there was a non-authorial addition of a stanza in section XV of Pearl;(n1) but, as the last word of the elongated section XV is neuerpelese (nevertheless), a word taken up as the first word of section XVI, there would appear to be an allusion to the numerology. Furthermore, neuer pe les is the fina

32、l phrase of every one of the six stanzas of section XV. Had the intrusive capital occurred at stanza 6 of section XV, one might argue that the scribe, accustomed to a five-stanza section, anticipated a new section and painted a decorated capital. But its removal till later reinforces its cryptic significance. But nathelees (But nevertheless) is the phrase Chaucer also uses in line 35 of the General Prologue, perhaps, like the Pearl-poet, to alert his readers to the preceding number of lines.The Chaucerian thi