Tag Archives: Poetry

The Pardoner’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer: A New Edition

Geoffrey Chaucer's The Pardoner's Tale Kindle Cover
Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Pardoner’s Tale Cover

Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Pardoner’s Tale: New Edition Now Available

The Pardoner’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer is probably one of the most accessible works of Middle English for modern readers – it features a neat moral parable, bawdy language and a barbed satire of the avarice prevalent in some elements of the medieval Church. The Pardoner’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer is also fairly short, and that no doubt makes it a favourite for English Lit classes at school and university level.

But even though Geoffrey Chaucer’s language is not that hard to understand, the very fact that every line or so you have to refer to a glossary or footnote does mean that the experience of reading a poem such as The Pardoner’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer can be frustrating and less enjoyable than it might be. Although there are some good prose translations available, I thought it would be useful to make a verse translation of the poem – partly because I thought it would be useful for others – and partly to help me re-engage with the text and get to grips with the meaning (it’s so easy to just read something and get the gist of what it’s about, but actually digging around and working out the meaning can be very rewarding). So to that end I have created an eBook of The Pardoner’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer, and a free online version, which feature both the original Middle English text, a parallel Middle and Modern English text in verse and also a Modern English version on its own. The verse translation into Modern English does not scan or rhyme perfectly – to do so would, I think, bend the meaning too much, but I hope it gives some of the flow or the original while also retaining the meaning.

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The Honour of Rome – Free on the Kindle for Five Days

I wrote a short story called The Honour of Rome a few years ago about a tribune in the later years of the Roman Republic. I have now published this via Amazon and it is free to read for five days from 26th January to 30th January.

It can be downloaded via:

US Amazon

UK Amazon

You can also read a free extract of my short story Chivalry: A Jake Savage Adventure when you download The Honour of Rome.

To read a brief extract go to The Honour of Rome page on this site.

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The Court in English Alliterative Poetry, 1350-1450 – Free on Kindle for Five Days

My University thesis, The Court in English Alliterative Poetry, 1350-1450 is now available as a free download for Kindle for the next five days. I thought I would experiment with the new Kindle Select programme and see what happened!

Here’s a link to the UK version: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003O86P40

And the US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003O86P40

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“Midway along the journey of our life” – Great Medieval Verses

From Canto I of Dante’s Inferno:

Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.

These are the opening lines to Dante’s great poem, and probably the most famous poem of the Middle Ages. What better way to start off a new series of posts about great poetic verses from Medieval poetry.

There is so much going on in these three lines, a lot of symbolism and allegory already, but also a suggestion of the clear descriptive style that Dante uses to such great effect in his poetry. Let us take the verse line by line:

Midway along the journey of our life

With the word “our” Dante makes this poem not only about him but about us as well, an allegory that we should be taking note of as well. In the Middle Ages mortal life was seen as a journey or pilgrimage, with the ultimate goal being Heaven, thus the journey that the poet travels is through the three possibilities for a person after death: Hell, Purgatory or Heaven. The poet is notionally midway through his life in the setting of the poem as he was born in 1265 and the poem takes place in 1300.

I woke to find myself in a dark wood,

Oh dear, things can’t be good for Dante, he’s in  dark wood, which I imagine can’t be bad thing. The simple phrase “dark wood” is a great example of the simple descriptive style, it conjures up so many allusions to being lost, to being afraid, to being isolated and outcast and to being in a dangerous place, that Dante need to say very little more than this (although he does expand on the bitterness and savagery of the place in subsequent verses).

for I had wandered off from the straight path.

And now we know why Dante is in a “dark wood”. He has gone off the straight path to God for some reason. He has sinned perhaps or has let his attention drift from the proper goal of a Christian’s life – i.e. the pilgrimage or journey towards God mentioned in the first line of the poem.

It’s not the religious content that attracts me to this verse, but the sheer simplicity and depth of meaning which is conveyed by these three lines. They effectively set-up the whole premise for the Divine Comedy.

Here’s an alternative translation and the original Italian from the Princeton Dante Project:

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost.

Expect to see a few more choice verses from Dante’s work coming up in future posts.

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Cutting my writing teeth on the Chewy Sonnet Form

I have been having a go at writing a sonnet recently, and really I didn’t know how hard it was going to be. I have had to abandon my first attempt as I realised that I was going to find it difficult to find the right rhymes for each line.

Scansion

But, undeterred I am having another go. The first prerequisite I have decided is to sort out the scansion issue. This is where each line of the sonnet has to be iambic pentameter, basically ten syllables, with alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. Stressed syllables usually fall at the beginning of a word, but sometimes, for instance the word “deceive”, it’s the second syllable that is stressed. Luckily most dictionaries provide a guide as to which syllable has the primary stress.

The stress of the single word!

But what about single words. In these cases they are stressed if the word is grammatically important – i.e. it’s a noun, verb, adjective, rather than a pronoun or article. This I think is where it gets a bit more subjective.

Rhyming

So, phew, once you get the hang of that you then need to sort out the rhyme scheme, which can vary a lot, but for your standard Shakespearean sonnets tends to be:

A B B A C D D C E F F E GG

or

A B A B C D C D E F E F GG

Now it’s quite challenging to get the rhymes, but doable I think.

Content and Structure

The big challenge is really what are you going to write about, and here I think the sonnet tradition gives the beginning poet a bit of help as there tends to be an accepted structure of what content goes where depending on which quatrain or group of four lines you are writing. So:

  • First quatrain: An exposition of the main theme and main metaphor.
  • Second quatrain: Theme and metaphor extended or complicated; often, some imaginative example is given.
  • Third quatrain: Peripeteia (a twist or conflict), often introduced by a “but” (very often leading off the ninth line).
  • Couplet: Summarizes and leaves the reader with a new, concluding image.

So, wish me luck! If I get this down I will hopefully be posting some examples here!

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Two Poems on Praeter Naturam

Poem About Writing Poetry
Image by Merry~Blues via Flickr

Just to let you know I have posted two poems – not exactly new, as I wrote them a while ago, but new to this site. Hope you enjoy them. I am hoping to add the occasional poem to the site on an ongoing basis.

I think that writing poetry is a great way for a fiction writer to think about words and their meaning in a more precise way.

Downers and Time Slips

Stoical Persistence

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