The Istoriaphile’s Corner

It’s no secret that I’m addicted to reading.  I started staring at printed pages before I learned to walk and I was pulling the meaning from them before I could tie my shoes so reading was never hard.   Want to hear a secret? Reading the Classics, those old, required plays and poems was hard for me, at first.  My eyes, trained for the fast-paced, economic sentences of the twentieth century, stopped dead at Elizabethan verse and Middle English. Now,  professors tend to look down on would-be English Majors who can’t discuss Shakespeare and Chaucer, so I had to resolve the issue.  You could say I got a lot of help.  I’d prefer to think of it as cheating. The Canterbury Tales Take enough English classes and eventually you’ll bump up against Chaucer’s famous tales.  The premise is simple.  A bunch of religious travelers meet at a pub and amuse each other through the evening by telling stories.  The problem is, they’re speaking in Middle English, which has, at best, a nodding acquaintance with our type of palaver.  As an example, I’ll give you the start of my favorite, The Miller’s Tale: Whilom ther was dwellynge at oxenford A riche gnof,…