ONE OF MY ENDURING party tricks—not terribly well loved, though forever delightful to me—is my habit, when drunk, of reciting the opening 18 lines of the prologue to The Canterbury Tales. “Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, / The droghte of March hath perced to the roote”: the beginnings of the pilgrimage to Canterbury, when April showers bring the spring after March’s drought. I don’t know if the practice remains, but when I was in high school, it was taught to us by rote, the better for us to get a feel for the cotton-mouth cadence of Chaucer’s Middle English, a language that is legible and incomprehensible at once. Shakespeare’s English, 200 years later, was thorny and gorgeous, riddled with unfamiliar vocabulary, but with the help of endnotes and patience, you could find your footing on the balance beam of its enjambed passages. Middle English was a step further into the shadows. You could sound it out, and trip gratefully over cognates half-buried throughout, but it was headachy to parse. Our red-bordered paperback edition, with its burghers on the march, offered a side-by-side translation into modern English.
After learning a chunk of the prologue by heart in the original Middle English, we read most of the actual Tales in the modern. I remember fragments of it: that the Wife of Bath had a gap between her teeth like I do, and it is a sign of lustiness; that the comic potential of kissing someone’s ass is timeless, ageless, and eternal (someone sticks her “nether ye” out a window to receive). But mostly, it is gone, passed out of my mind like a pilgrim picked up and headed to the next town. The prologue in Middle English, syllable by syllable, line by line, remains. Get me a drink and I’ll show you.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة April 27 - May 10, 2020 من New York magazine.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة April 27 - May 10, 2020 من New York magazine.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Unmasking Diddy
The rap mogul shook off decades of rumored bad behavior with wholesome PR revamps. Now the allegations against him are his legacy.
Staging Sufjan
How playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury turned a classic indie-rock album into a Justin Peck-choreographed dance piece that's now Broadway bound.
Justin Kuritzkes Serves an Ace
With his first movie script for the erotic tennis drama Challengers, he has gone from struggling playwright to in-demand screenwriter.
To Brooklyn, by Way of Paris and Rome
A whirlwind week with Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri as she stages the brand's first New York runway show in a decade.
A Burlesque Family at Home
Showbiz couple Angie Pontani and Brian Newman’s high-spirited Marine Park house.
A Bistro With Shish Barak
Huda impressively balances its many influences.
THE 'DEBATE ME BRO
Mehdi Hasan's aggressive interviewing style landed him a Sunday show on MSNBC. Until he started talking about Palestine.
THE MAN WHO GOSSIPED TOO MUCH
For almost two decades, JOHN NELSON anonymously published blind items skewering the Hollywood elite on the blog CRAZY DAYS AND NIGHTS. Then his identity was revealed in the midst of a messy affair.
TODD BLANCHE IS A SURPRISINGLY COMPETENT LAWYER. AND HE'S ON TRACK TO KEEP HIS CLIENT OUT OF JAIL UNTIL THE ELECTION. IN DEFENSE OF TRUMP
TODD BLANCHE WAS looking for his man. Or it could be a woman, but probably not.
Self: Emma Alpern
In Outer Space Why do so many women believe their bodies are controlled by the moon?