Stylistic Analysis of Chaucer’s Invocation

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to
the roote,
- Full Poem

1. The Poem

Let us take the example of medieval literature and see what emerges when
we apply the techniques of Practical Stylistics to it.

Practical Stylistics is designed, as has been said, to define the style of a work.
This text is, however, 600 years old, written in one dialect of a form of English
called Middle English (comprising the many forms of English written between
around 1100 and 1550). Before we can think ^seriously about style, then, we
must be able to understand the prose sense of the passage. Many words
have slightly changed their form and might look unfamiliar even though their
sound will be close to their modern sound. You might like to record your
comments on a separate piece of paper (not in exam of course).

2. First Impressions

After reading the poem, it might be clear to you that you already knew the
following words (and many more), even if their modern English form is
slightly different:

Middle English shoures

Modern English showers

soote sweet

perced pierced

By reading Middle English in this way, and training your ear to hear the
Modern English word, you will quickly realise that you already know a great
deal of Middle English vocabulary, You will also have noticed words that have
no equivalent in Modern English:

Middle English eek

Modern English also

holt grove

palmeres pilgrims

strondes shores
If you were studying Middle English, it would be necessary to learn these
words. This might not be so arduous, however, since many of them have
cousins in languages you might already know. Thus ’feme’, for example, is
related to German ’femt, ’distant’. Those who know French will

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569

spot very many cousins between that language and Middle English (as in
’flour1 and ’tendre’ above). Those who know Latin will recognise the
ancestors of many words used here (as in Vertu’ below).

A third set words will consist of those that do have Modern English forms, but
whose sense has either shifted or narrowed:

Middle English licour vertu inspired

Modern English

liquid

force, power

breathed (from Latin: ’spirare’, to breath)

A final set of words might be the proper nouns with which you might be
unfamiliar:

Proper noun Sense

Zephirus west wind

Tabard a Southwark inn

Read the text over silently again, and its prose sense should be clear to you.

3. Developing Your Thoughts

Even with an understanding of the prose sense of the passage, it may be as

well to read it aloud to yourself at this stage. Real possession of a text
necessarily involves impressing it on your inner ear, hearing the way in which
it moves. You might profit from having the poem read to you again.

When you try to read it aloud, you will notice two things: (i) that the long
vowel sounds of Modern English have changed from their Middle English
equivalents; and (ii) that the passage is written in an iambic pentameter. The
simplest way to pronounce Middle English is to listen to, and imitate, an
experienced reader. The same is true of hearing the metre: listen to the
expert, and make your own reading. The feature common to almost each line
is the presence of five stresses, normally arranged in an iambic pattern.
Reading the lines in this way reveals that the final ’e’ of, say, ’sweete’ in line
5 must be pronounced as an unstressed syllable. It also reveals that some
instances of final ’e’ are not sounded, through elision with the vowel sound
beginning the subsequent word, as in ’droghte of, in line 2.
We are now in a position to start thinking about the style of the passage. We
have examined various elements of style. Practical Stylistics has no formula,
by which one can simply list a set of stylistic resources; each text will make
its own invitations, and exert its own demands, by combining these resources
in distinctive ways. One handy tip for producing a coherent commentary of a
text is to read over the passage carefully, with an eye to what feature of style
has highest profile. This will obviously differ in each text. Try reading the
passage again: what strikes you most forcibly about its style?

The pages that follow offer one way into a coherent reading. There will be
others, and you might Like to make your own notes at each step, in response
to the question posed at the end of each page. Comparing the reading you
arrive at with the reading proposed here will be interesting.

4. Critical Discussion

You might consider its.iyntax, or sentence construction. The first sentence is

very remarkable,
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A HANDBOOK OF STYLE AND STYLISH

being 18 lines long. If you think about its basic structure, you will see that the
main verb (’longei only appears at 12, suspended for a full 11 lines. Those
first 11 lines are made up principally of tw subordinate clauses (adverbial
clauses of time), each introduced by the subordinating conjunctk ”whan”.
Each of these subordinate clauses has further subordinate clauses, and the
second heightei the effect of suspending the main verb by piling on further
co-ordinate clauses, each introduced h ’and’. When we turn to the rest of the
passage, we notice that the sentences are shorter, and that th main verbs
fbifu”, Veren’, Veren esed’, ’hadde spoken’) are not held back in so
spectacular a way a ’longen’ is, if at all.

Already we have noticed something very different between two sections of

this passage Stylistic effect is often achieved by contrast. If examination of
one feature of a passage suggests thi existence of a powerful contrast, keep
this in mind to see if the contrast holds for other aspects o style.

The potential contrast between lines 1-18 on the one hand and lines 19-34 on
the othei suggests that we should focus attention on that very long sentence,
by way of defining its features in such a way to press the contrast. How might
we work our way into that sentence? Go back to oui first observation about
syntax: because so much depends on the final arrival of the main clause
(Thanne longen...’), it might be worth pausing over that point of articulation.
Are there other stylistic differences between the subordinate clauses (lines 1-
11) and the main clause (lines 12-18)?

Consider the rhyme pattern here. Rhyme is an audible linguistic patterning,

and so a figure of speech. If we take our bearings from the syntax, then we
will focus on the rhyme at the key syntactic break. While rhyme often serves
as a kind of background music to poetry, it will often also have thematic
significance. This is true of the ’corages’/ ’pilgrimages’ rhyme, since that
rhyme puts the natural world into relation with the cultural world: ’corages’
signifies the vital spirits or sexual desire of the birds, while ’pilgrimages’
designates a specifically human, cultural practice. The rhyme puts the two
into relationship by suggesting that the human, cultural world of religious
practice also takes its impetus from nature. Religion and nature are not
wholly disparate practices, so this sentence would suggest. The final rhyme
on the homophones ’seke’ and ’seeke’ (a rime rich$ implies the same thing:
one seeks the saint (here Thomas Becket) to thank him for having cured the
sickbody.

Thinking about rhyme might provoke us to see that the whole passage is in
couplets (later known as heroic couplets), a form introduced into English
poetry by Chaucer. This form was designed for narrative poems, capable as it
is of the easy forward step of narrative, with the possibility of enjambement,
as well as, when required, the more formal effects produced by caesura and
end-stopping. The easy sweep of forward movement in this passage, for
example, is suggested by the enjambements of lines 5-8, while the more
formal, end-stopped possibility is exploited by lines 11 and 12.

Can you isolate other stylistic differences within the first sentence?

If the rhyme on ’corages1 and ’pilgrimages’ suggests a difference between

the natural and the cultural world, then what of the diction of the passage? Is
it significant that the first, subordinate clauses contain many classical
references? We might have forgotten it, but our names for the monthi (here
’April!’ and ’March’) are derived from classical Roman, and therefore non-
Christian sources, ’Zephirus’ is the Roman god responsible for the west wind,
and the Ram is a sign of the zodiac, not itself a Christian symbol. While those
kinds of words, and many others designating natural processes, appear in the
subordinate clause, the words of the main via uses are drawn from a

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rsrai:
STTC ANALYSIS OF CHAUCER’S INVOCATION

571

religious lexical set, here related to the business of pilgrimage (’palmeres’,

’halwes’, ’martir1). •

In this very formal sentence, one might also notice that the register of the
diction is not at all colloquial. It contains, rather, words of a technical cast:
the subordinate clauses contain many words to do with natural processes,
often Latinate in origin and scientific (e.g. Veyne’, Vertu’, ’engendred’,
’inspired’).

Are there any other aspects of style in the first sentence that you would
isolate?

Consider its point of view. This sentence describes natural processes without
reference to the point of view from which the speaker is positioned, or
without any account of how the speaker came to know what he or she knows.
The speaker has universal access both to the atmospheric heights of the
earthly realm (’the yonge sonne / Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne’), as
well as to its minute and lowly particulars (”every veyne’ of plants), without
losing his (or her) power of vision. In the main clause the action moves from
the cosmos to more specific geographies, but geographies seen from a bird’s
eye view. At first pilgrims are seen moving across the whole hemisphere,
before the view narrows to England, in which they move from all extremities
of the island towards the religious centre of Canterbury.

We are now in a position to account for the structure and style of this
sentence, with its representation of religious practice happening within a
frame of natural cycles, and its account of specifically Christian practice
within a world that is still described in the terms of classical, pagan religion.
Out of all these elements of style, but out of its syntax especially, emerges a
complex sense of the inter-relation between different fields of activity, the
natural and the religious.

If all that is true of the first sentence, how do the remaining lines of this
excerpt offer a stylistic contrast? Again, you might choose a stylistic feature
of the second set of lines that has very high profile in order to generate the
contrast.

The most obvious contrast is in its point of view: whereas ths first sentence
has an unspecified universal point of view, the second set of lines is
consistently governed by the first person personal pronoun T, or the first
person plural personal pronoun Ve’. In these three itences the vision of
narration is wholly determined by what the narrator experienced. The
narrator stands in relation to an audience here, too: he addresses the ’yow’ of
line 34. His position in time is also different: whereas lines 1-18 describe an
annual, cyclical event, the rest of the excerpt narrates a specific moment in
time as experienced by the narrator. Chronological reference *here is not to
’April’ or the ’Ram’, but rather to a specific ’day’, to the sun being at ’reste’,
or to making an agreement to rise ’erly* next day.

Why do we assume a masculine narrator? Nothing in the passage in fact

confirms this, but we might assume that a lone pilgrim in a medieval text is
more likely to be male (even if Margery Kempe offers a counter example). We
would need more of the text to test this assumption. From our careful
analysis of lines 1-18, in fact, we can contrast each of the features observed
there with what we see in lines 19-34:

The register of the diction is no longer scientific and technical, but rather
drawn from an everyday world of buildings fchambres and stables’) and
places, some of which have no religious significance (the Tabard’). The diction
is in part that of the tourist trade (’hostelrye’, ’compaignye’, ’chambres’,
’esed’). Whereas the sun in line 7 is an astronomical sphere moving through
its annual cycle, the sun in line 30 is part of the quotidian, everyday world,
setting after a single day. The syntax is, as we observed earlier, much less
tightly organised. The elements of the sentence in lines
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A HANDBOOK OF STYLE AND STYLISTICS

19-27, for example, are loosely joined, with adjectival phrases fRedy to
wenden on my pilgrimage...’) and subordinate clauses (That toward
Canterbury wolden ryde’) tacked on to create a sentence whose basic
structure flows from its first word fBifil’). Whereas the sentence of lines 1-18
rises to and falls from the syntactic climax (Thanne longen...’), this sentence
falls from a main vert) that is given immediately. There is no syntactic tension
in this sentence, and it is the syntax fit for extended narrative. Whereas the
first sentence is a self-enclosed picture of the cosmos, the second sequence
establishes the conditions for extended narrative.

Because the syntax is looser, the metre also operates in a more relaxed way,
with many examples of enjambement in, say, lines 23-26; this creates a more
informal, conversational effect, as the verse does not draw attention to its
own patterning.

Lines 18 to 34 are almost wholly literal, with one bare metaphor in line 30
(’the sonne was to reste’). Lines 1-18, by contrast, frequently personify the
forces of nature: ’Aprill’, ’Zephirus’, ’the yonge sonne’, ’nature’, and deploy
corresponding verbs in metaphorical senses: ’inspired’, ’hath yronne’,
’priketh’.

In short, these two sequences of verse are highly contrastive stylistically.

Lines 1-18 are tightly organised syntactically, lexically elevated, rhetorically
colourful, and narrated from a universal point of view to no particular
audience. The second sequence of sentences rontrasts in each respect: they
are narrated from a very specific, chronologically delimited, point of view, and
directed to a specific audience; their informal syntax avoids tension; their
diction is not technical, and is drawn from a material world of everyday
reality; and they are rhetorically plain.

Why should the poet juxtapose these stylistically contrastive sequences? An

answer to this question moves from the observation of distinct elements of
style to a larger sense of why those elements of style should be deployed in
the way they are.

Style implies a way of seeing and ordering the world. Here the poet
juxtaposes two different, even if not wholly disparate, ways of describing
experience. Lines 1-18 depict a world of necessity, which happens, and will
continue to happen, every year. The operations of the cosmos have certain
recurring natural and cultural effects, and those operations are pictured in an
elevated, formal way. Even if it is the case that the grand natural scheme of
lines 1-18 prompts human actions, those human actions, as they are narrated
in lines 19-34, are subject to chance and contingency. The very first word of
the second sequence (’Bifil’ - ’it chanced’) suggests the accidental quality of
narrative within the non-accidental scheme of nature; the same is true of ”by
aventure yfalle’: these pilgrims! just happened to fall into company together.
And whereas things happen by natural necessity in the cosmos, in the world
of human narrative things happen by decision and pact: the pilgrims make 1
’forward’ (an agreement) to rise early the following morning. The two worlds
are not wholly] . unrelated: they share some of the same features (e.g. the
sun), and the first governs the movement of desire in the second. Equally, the
birds are ’pricked’ by desire in their ’corages’ in the first sequence, just as the
narrator is ready to set off for Canterbury with a ’ful devout corage1 at line
22. The two sequences are, however, governed by very different premises.
The poet simply juxtaposes these stylistic and culturally disparate blocks
without resolving the tensions between them.

We have so far restricted ourselves to understanding the passage within its

own terms. Might it change our view were we to know more about the textual
forms in which it was presented in the author’s own lifetime, and to know who
the author was? In fact this passage was written by Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-
1400), and it is the opening of his Canterbury Tales (written between 1390
and
1400). Chaucer lived well before the introduction of printing into England in
the 1470s, and before printing texts were copied by hand in manuscripts.
Unfortunately no manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales survive from before
Chaucer’s death in 1400, and it is probably the case that he died before the
STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF CHAUCER’S INVOCATION

573

poem was complete. Very early fifteenth-century manuscripts do survive,

however (seven of them in Cambridge libraries).

Having considered the style of this passage in detail from many perspectives,
we are in a position to answer our initial question about the applicability of
the methods of Practical Criticism to medieval texts (or at least to this
medieval text). The form of address and certain aspects of the manuscript
presentation of this passage suggest that it was a text designed to be read
aloud rather than meditated on privately. For all that, it remains true that the
dense verbal texture of the passage is susceptible of very close reading. That
is not necessarily characteristic of all medieval (or of many more modern)
texts, but the techniques of Stylistics remain useful in analysing a wide range
of kinds of writing, from the highly to the lightly textured.

Now that we have considered this text stylistically, what further directions
might we take?