As Dan Chaucer said to the Europhiles, `Stint thy clappe!'.(Geoffrey Chaucer's vocabulary)(Critical Essay)

Publication: Spectator

Publication Date: 28-JUL-01

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COPYRIGHT 2001 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)

I have been rereading Chaucer for the first time in years. What joy! What fun! He takes you straight back into the second half of the 14th century (he was born about 1345). He tells you in quaint detail about houses (you learn they had cat-flaps even then), food, furniture, clothes -- he is as good on how people dressed as Surtees -- and, not least, how people looked. Alison, the fetching, 18-year-old, naughty heroine of the Miller's Tale, is 'as slim and sinuous as a weasel', she `starts up like a colt in her stall'. The Miller himself was `big of braun and eek of bones', could heave a door off its hinges or break it down `at a running with his heed'. He had a big `werte' on the right side of his nose, `and thereon stood a tuft of heris/Reed as the brustles of a sowis eris'. Get it? Middle English is not difficult, especially when you learn how to pronounce it (e.g., `heris' is hairs, `sowis eris' is sow's ears). You need a glossary, for some common words are...

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