Geoffrey Chaucher: ‘April Sweet Shower”
Middle English version
Modern English Version
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
5 Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
5
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
10That slepen al the nyght with open eye(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
15And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
10
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were
seeke.
15
Bifil that in that seson, on a day,
20
25
30
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay
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Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,
At nyght was come into that hostelrye
Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye
Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle
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In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they
alle,
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde.
The chambres and the stables weren
wyde,
And wel we weren esed atte beste;
And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste,
So hadde I spoken with hem everichon
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That I was of hir felaweshipe anon,
And made forward erly for to ryse
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When in April the sweet showers fall
That pierce March's drought to the root
and all
And bathed every vein in liquor that has
power
To generate therein and sire the flower;
When Zephyr also has with his sweet
breath,
Filled again, in every holt and heath,
The tender shoots and leaves, and the
young sun
His half-course in the sign of the Ram has
run,
And many little birds make melody
That sleep through all the night with open
eye
(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and
rage)
Then folk do long to go on pilgrimage,
And palmers to go seeking out strange
strands,
To distant shrines well known in distant
lands.
And specially from every shire's end
Of England they to Canterbury went,
The holy blessed martyr there to seek
Who helped them when they lay so ill and
weak
It happened that, in that season, on a
day
In Southwark, at the Tabard, as I lay
Ready to go on pilgrimage and start
To Canterbury, full devout at heart,
There came at nightfall to that hostelry
Some nine and twenty in a company
Of sundry persons who had chanced to
fall
In fellowship, and pilgrims were they all
That toward Canterbury town would ride.
The rooms and stables spacious were and
wide,
And well we there were eased, and of the
best.
And briefly, when the sun had gone to
rest,
So had I spoken with them, every one,
To take our wey, ther as I yow devyse.
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40
But nathelees, whil I have tyme and
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space,
Er that I ferther in this tale pace,
Me thynketh it acordaunt to resoun
To telle yow al the condicioun
Of ech of hem, so as it semed me,
And whiche they weren, and of what
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degree,
And eek in what array that they were inne;
And at a knyght than wol I first bigynne.
That I was of their fellowship anon,
And made agreement that we'd early rise
To take the road, as I will to you apprise.
But none the less, whilst I have time
and space,
Before yet further in this tale I pace,
It seems to me in accord with reason
To describe to you the state of every one
Of each of them, as it appeared to me,
And who they were, and what was their
degree,
And even what clothes they were dressed
in;
And with a knight thus will I first begin.
Translation
Quando in Aprile le dolci piogge cadono
e penetrano la siccità (drought) di Marzo fino alla radice, e tutte
le vene (degli alberi, piante) vengono immerse in una linfa
che possiede una forza tale da generare (engendering) la nascita dei fiori,
quando anche Zeffiro (vento dell’ovest) col suo dolce soffio esala un alito
in ogni boschetto e in ogni brughiera (heath)
sopra i teneri germogli, e il giovane sole
ha percorso la seconda metà del suo tragitto nel segno dell’Ariete (Ram)
e gli uccellini (fowl) che passano la notte senza chiudere occhio
(così li spinge a fare la natura)
cantano con grande melodia
allora la gente desidera andare in pellegrinaggio
e i pellegrini (palmers*) desiderano cercare i lidi (strands) stranieri
di santi lontani, venerati (hallowed) in varie (sundry) terre
e specialmente, si dirigono (wend)
verso Canterbury da ogni contea (shires*) dell’Inghilterra
per cercare il santo martire benedetto, che presto
diede loro il suo aiuto/che fu sollecito a dare il suo aiuto
quando erano malati.
Accadde in quella stagione che un giorno
a Southwark, nella locanda del Tabarro (= mantello), mentre ero pronto
ad andare in pellegrinaggio per partire per Canterbury
pieno di devozione,
accadde che alla sera giunse in quella taverna
una compagnia di circa ventinove persone di diversa provenienza (soundry folk)
che per caso si erano incontrate,
ed erano tutti pellegrini che
avevano intenzione di andare (a cavallo) a Canterbury.
Le stanze e le stalle (stables) della locanda erano grandi;
ci misero a nostro agio, tutto era nel migliore dei modi.
E in breve, quando il sole se ne fu andato a riposare,
io avevo parlato con tutti loro del viaggio (trip)
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e ben presto fui uno della loro compagnia.
Ci impegnammo (pledged) ad alzarci presto e di avviarci sulla via
per Canterbury, come mi avete sentito dire.
Tuttavia, dato che ne ho il tempo e l’occasione,
prima che la mia storia prosegua,
mi sembra una cosa ragionevole dire
quale fosse la loro condizione, la tipologia di abito (array)
di ciascuno di loro, così come sembrava a me,
in base alla loro professione e al loro grado sociale
e con quali vesti (apparel) stavano cavalcando;
e perciò inizierò da un Cavaliere.
1 - COMPREHENSION
Themes
Pilgrimage, love, rebirth, social rank, holiness, Christianity.
Summary
The narrator opens the General Prologue with a description of the return of spring. He describes the
April rains, the burgeoning flowers and leaves, and the chirping birds. Around this time of year, the
narrator says, people begin to feel the desire to go on a pilgrimage. Many devout English pilgrims
set off to visit shrines in distant holy lands, but even more choose to travel to Canterbury to visit the
relics of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, where they thank the martyr for having
helped them when they were in need. The narrator tells us that as he prepared to go on such a
pilgrimage, staying at a tavern in Southwark called the Tabard Inn, a great company of twenty-nine
travelers entered. The travelers were a diverse group who, like the narrator, were on their way to
Canterbury. They happily agreed to let him join them. That night, the group slept at the Tabard, and
woke up early the next morning to set off on their journey. Before continuing the tale, the narrator
declares his intent to list and describe each of the members of the group.
riescosollevarme2-Sou
2- SOUNDS PATTERNS
-Metre
Iambic pentametre
Rhyme Scheme: AA BB CC…………
-Sound devices
Rhymes:
The rhymes follow the structure described above. Some words with the same ending sound:
fall/all; power/flore; breath/heath, etc.
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3 LANGUAGE AND MEANING
Narrator: 1st person omniscient narrator
Chaucer's voice, in re-telling the tales as accurately as he can, entirely disappears into that of his
characters, and thus the Tales operates almost like a drama. Where do Chaucer's writerly and
narratorial voices end, and his characters' voices begin? This self-vanishing quality is key to the
Tales, and perhaps explains why there is one pilgrim who is not described at all so far, but who is
certainly on the pilgrimage - and he is the most fascinating, and the most important by far: a poet
and statesman by the name of Geoffrey Chaucer.
Most important pilgrim descriptions: the Knight, the Squire, the Prioress, the Monk, the
Friar, the Merchant, the Clerk, the Man of law, the Franklin (a big eater), A Haberdasher and
a Carpenter, a Weaver, a Dyer and a Tapycer (weaver of tapestries), the Cook, A Shipman from
Dartmouth, A Doctor of Medicine, the Wife of Bath, A good religious man, A Parson of a Town,
a Plowman a Miller, A noble Manciple, The Reeve (dipendente pubblico), the Summoner, e
Pardoner
Symbolism and Rhetorical Figures
Symbols:
Array: the portraits of the pilgrims use their clothing as a symbol of the personality traits of the
wearer. Most often, pilgrims' clothing symbolizes their possession or lack of money in how fancy or
simple it is.
Physical description:the practitioners of medieval physiognomy thought that it was possible to
learn things about someone's personality from their physical characteristics. For this reason, various
physical features in the pilgrim's portraits are symbols of certain character traits. The Wife of Bath's
gap teeth are a symbol of sexuality, as are the Miller's red beard and hair.
Allegory (as a literary device an allegory in its most general sense is an extended metaphor):
pilgrimage: journey towards holiness, destiny
April sweet showers: rebirth
The Canterbury Tales opens in April, at the height of spring. The pilgrimage begins in the spring,
"whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote / The droghte of March hath perced to the roote" (General
Prologue 1 – 2). Since this is the beginning of the poem, and the beginning of the pilgrimage (which
itself is the beginning of repentance), it's likely that springtime here is a symbol of beginnings. And
the beginning of things is exactly what the poem emphasizes in its description of springtime, talking
about how the wind spreads the seeds that peek their heads above the soil as they begin to grow into
crops, and how birds begin their mating season.
This brings us to another thing that springtime symbolizes: erotic love. You see it in the way April
is piercing March "to the roote" with his showers, watering things and causing them to grow in the
same way a penis "waters" the ovum and causes it to grow. In its masterful opening, the poem links
springtime and sex in the way that they both cause new life to begin.
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Analysis
These are the opening lines with which the narrator begins the General Prologue of The Canterbury
Tales. The imagery in this opening passage is of spring’s renewal and rebirth. April’s sweet
showers have penetrated the dry earth of March, hydrating the roots, which in turn coax flowers out
of the ground. The constellation Taurus is in the sky; Zephyr, the warm, gentle west wind, has
breathed life into the fields; and the birds chirp merrily. The verbs used to describe Nature’s
actions—piercing, engendering , inspiring, and pricking suggest images of conception.
The natural world’s reawakening aligns with the narrator’s similarly “inspired” poetic sensibility.
The General Prologue was probably written early in the composition of the Canterbury Tales, and
offers an interesting comparison point to many of the individual tales itself. Of course, it does not
match up to the tales as we have them in a number of ways: the Nun's Priest and the Second Nun
are not described, and, most significantly, the work as we have it does not reflect the Host's plan.
For starters, the pilgrimage only seems to go as far as Canterbury (for the Parson's Tale) and only
the narrator tells two tales on the way there, with all the other pilgrims telling only a single tale (and
some who are described in the General Prologue not telling a tale at all).
We must, therefore, view the General Prologue with some hesitation as a comparison point to the
tales themselves: it offers useful or enlightening suggestions, but they are no means a complete,
reliable guide to the tales and what they mean. What the General Prologue offers is a brief, often
very visual description of each pilgrim, focusing on details of their background, as well as key
details of their clothing, their food likes and dislikes, and their physical features. These descriptions
fall within a common medieval tradition of portraits in words (which can be considered under the
technical term ekphrasis).
The invocation of spring with which the General Prologue begins is lengthy and formal compared
to the language of the rest of the Prologue. The first lines situate the story in a particular time and
place, but the speaker does this in cosmic and cyclical terms, celebrating the vitality and richness of
spring. This approach gives the opening lines a dreamy, timeless, unfocused quality, and it is
therefore surprising when the narrator reveals that he’s going to describe a pilgrimage that he
himself took rather than telling a love story. A pilgrimage is a religious journey undertaken for
penance and grace. As pilgrimages went, Canterbury was not a very difficult destination for an
English person to reach. It was, therefore, very popular in fourteenth-century England, as the
narrator mentions. Pilgrims traveled to visit the remains of Saint Thomas Becket, archbishop of
Canterbury, who was murdered in 1170 by knights of King Henry II. Soon after his death, he
became the most popular saint in England. The pilgrimage in The Canterbury Tales should not be
thought of as an entirely solemn occasion, because it also offered the pilgrims an opportunity to
abandon work and take a vacation.
In line 20, the narrator abandons his unfocused, all-knowing point of view, identifying himself as an
actual person for the first time by inserting the first person—“I”—as he relates how he met the
group of pilgrims while staying at the Tabard Inn. He emphasizes that this group, which he
encountered by accident, was itself formed quite by chance (25–26). He then shifts into the firstperson plural, referring to the pilgrims as “we” beginning in line 29, asserting his status as a
member of the group.
The narrator ends the introductory portion of his prologue by noting that he has “tyme and space” to
tell his narrative. His comments underscore the fact that he is writing some time after the events of
his story, and that he is describing the characters from memory. He has spoken and met with these
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people, but he has waited a certain length of time before sitting down and describing them. His
intention to describe each pilgrim as he or she seemed to him is also important, for it emphasizes
that his descriptions are not only subject to his memory but are also shaped by his individual
perceptions and opinions regarding each of the characters.
On the other hand, the narrator’s declaration that he will tell us about the “condicioun,” “degree,”
and “array” (dress) of each of the pilgrims suggests that his portraits will be based on objective facts
as well as his own opinions. He spends considerable time characterizing the group members
according to their social positions. The pilgrims represent a diverse cross section of fourteenthcentury English society. Medieval social theory divided society into three broad classes, called
“estates”: the military, the clergy, and the laity. (The nobility, not represented in the General
Prologue, traditionally derives its title and privileges from military duties and service, so it is
considered part of the military estate.) In the portraits that we will see in the rest of the General
Prologue, the Knight and Squire represent the military estate. The clergy is represented by the
Prioress (and her nun and three priests), the Monk, the Friar, and the Parson. The other characters,
from the wealthy Franklin to the poor Plowman, are the members of the laity. These lay characters
can be further subdivided into landowners (the Franklin), professionals (the Clerk, the Man of Law,
the Guildsmen, the Physician, and the Shipman), laborers (the Cook and the Plowman), stewards
(the Miller, the Manciple, and the Reeve), and church officers (the Summoner and the Pardoner).
Notes:
The first eighteen lines are a very long sentence, beginning with a secondary clause introduced by
“when”, followed by another time-clause, which begins in the same way. The main-clause is
introduced in line 12: its subject is “people” and verb is “long”. “To long” means to “to desire in a
very intense way”, “to desire deeply”.
 In the original version, which was written in middle English, the month of April is personified and
the sweet showers fall as if April was intent on bringing the whole world back to life.

Zephyrus: just as April is personified, so is Zephyrus, which is here given its Latin name.
Zephyrus is the west wind.
 The young sun: it’s called “young” because it’s near the beginning of its course (percorso). The
sun was thought to enter Aries/the Ram on the 12th of March and it was reckoned to remain (si
calcolava che rimanesse) in this sign until the 11th of April, so during the month of April the sun has
to finish its time/its half-run in the Ram, and then it has to move on (passare a) to Taurus/the Bull.
 Chaucer says that the sun has already run its half-course in the Ram, so the date of the start of
pilgrimages is after the 11th of April. He often gives his dates indirectly in terms of Zodiac or in
astronomical terms. In the Middle Ages there was a sophisticated knowledge of astrology and times
and days were often measured by the system of Zodiac. The sun begins its course in the Ram in the
second half of March and completes it in the first half of April.
 Nature so stimulates (stimola) their hearts (line 11).
 In the Middle Ages people went on pilgrimages for various reasons: to fulfil (sciogliere) a vow
(voto) they made in time of sickness (malattia) or trouble, to sick (cercare) a cure, in the hope of
spiritual refreshment (rinnovamento spirituale), to expiate some crime or in the case of rogues
(ladri) to exploit a gathering (sfruttare una compagine) for their own ends (per i propri scopi), for
example to rob people.
 The line 12 suggests that spring brings about (determina) a renewal (un rinnovamento) of love for
pilgrimiges.
 Palmers were pilgrims who went to the Holy Land (Terra Santa). They were given this name
because they came back from the Holy Land carrying a brunch of palm.

The shrines (santuari) that were usually frequented by pilgrims in the Middle Ages were in
Westminister, Walsingham and Canterbury. Canterbury was the most popular of them. In
Canterbury cathedral was the tomb of Saint Thomas à Becket.
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
Thomas à Becket was the archbishop (arcivescovo) of Canterbury and legate of the Pope (nunzio
apostolic). He was killed in his own cathedral in 1170 and was canonized four years later.
The shrine of Saint Thomas à Becket remained one of the favourite centres of pilgrimages until
1538, when it was destroyed by order (per ordine) of King Henry the VIII.
Southwark was at the south end (estremità sud) of London Bridge. The road to Canterbury started in
Southwark. In the Middle Ages London was a walled city (città circondata dalle mura) and the gates
were closed at night. Anyone who wanted to leave for Canterbury early in the morning stayed the
night in Southwark, where there were many inns.
 The Tabard was one of the most important. Nothing of this inn remains nowadays/today, but we
can get an idea of what it was like from some of the old inns which are still standing. The Tabard
was a fairly big building (edificio abbastanza grande), probably with two storeys (piani)/it was a
two-storied building. The kitchens, the eating rooms and the bedrooms were probably in three sides
of the building. The horse’s stables (stalle) occupied the fourth side. The building also had to/must
have had a balcony (terrazzo) running (che percorreva) a round inner courtyard (cortile interno
circolare). The host of the inn kept horses to hire to those who didn’t ride their own horses.
4 – CONTEXTUALIZATION
Boccaccio’s Decameron, a long work compromising several shorter tales, is often thought to be the
main stylistic influence on the Tales, though there is no evidence that Chaucer ever read it as an
entire work. The Tales as a whole, however, do owe much to Boccaccio: the Knight’s Tale is based
on Il Teseida and Chaucer’s “heigh style”, as Larry Benson has commented, “owes something to
Boccaccio's attempt to emulate the classics in his own vernacular.” The Monk’s Tale draws on
Boccaccio’s works in Latin, and the Clerk’s, Franklin’s, Merchant’s, Pardoner’s, Reeve’s and
Shipman’s Tales all have analogues (or at the very least, stories with considerable similarities) in
Boccaccio’s Decameron.
5 – PERSONAL RESPONSE
See p. 144 (Literary Hiperlinks)
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