Off to Canterbury!

Continuing to celebrate National Poetry Month, I’m reading part of the prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales! What’s special about today’s reading is that I’m attempting it in Middle English! I do include a modern English version, so see what you think!

Begun in 1387 but never finished, although published posthumously in 1400, The Canterbury Tales include 24 stories told from different characters’ perspectives as they journey to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.

For any of you who are experts in Middle English, I’d be interested in a critique of my reading! Thanks!

(The illustration is a portrait by Thomas Hoccleve, an English poet who may have met Chaucer. This is a page from Hoccleve’s The Regiment of Princes.)