#ENGLISH SCANSION HOW TO#

Every is also elided to read as two syllables, just as in modern English. Unless we pronounce bathed with two syllables, the iambic pattern will be broken. Just as in modern english, we want the strong stress (or ictus) to be on the first syllable of every. Once again, bathed should be pronounced bathèd. The tradition of pronouncing -ed words continued well into the Victorian Era. If we clip the pronunciation, the Iambic pattern will be broken. In textual parlance, it shouldn’t be clipped. Notice that perced should be pronounced percèd. (Pronouncing the e was not a hard and fast rule – as with droughte – some editions, I notice, omit the e in this word.) In the case of soote, the only reason we know is that Chaucer uses the word, midline, later in The Second Nun’s Tale: “The soote savour, lilie was hir name.” In this line, if we don’t pronounce soote as two syllables soot-uh, the iambic pattern will be broken. Scansion doesn’t help us because we could just as easily read the word as being one syllable. You might ask how a reader should know whether the final word soote is one or two syllables. But I’ve thrown in an interesting discussion at the bottom of the post to show to what degree scholars will debate such matters – and how it is only through meter that we have a clue.) (Now, having said that, there are some scholars who insist that aprill was originally spelled aprille and should be three syllables. His first line is a headless line with a feminine ending.

The Gypsy Scholar provides a good translation and I’m all for supporting another scholarly blogger!įrom the very first line of the Canterbury tales, Chaucer shows us that he’s not going to be hide-bound in his use of Iambic Pentameter. (Note: Some modern editions appear to only include the -e in words in which it was pronounced.)Īlso, this post isn’t about translating the text into modern English. Knowing that Chaucer was writing Iambic Pentameter helps us to know which – e was silent, in which word, and which – e was not. The other key is a familiarity with the Iambic Pentameter pattern. And in Chaucer’s day, this pronunciation still held sway in many English words. However, in German, it is pronounced something like Ros-uh (having two syllables). The word is the same in English and German. There is no silent – e as in the English word Rose (as in the flower). Why is that important? Because in German all vowels are pronounced. The first key is in recognizing that English is a Germanic language and that in Chaucer’s day the split between English and proto-German was still relatively fresh.

#ENGLISH SCANSION HOW TO#

The trick to recognizing Chaucer’s use of Iambic Pentameter is in knowing how to pronounce the words. The first record we have of Iambic Pentameter is in Chaucer’s verse. Judging by the literature left to us, Henry Howard was indeed the first to introduce Iambic Pentameter Blank Verse to English literature, but he wasn’t the first to introduce Iambic Pentameter. All of Chaucer’s Iambic Pentameter is rhymed – using a form called Open Heroic Couplets or Riding Rhymes. The confusion seems to stem from the difference between Blank Verse and Iambic Pentameter. There are some sites that credit Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, with first introducing Iambic Pentameter to the English Language. That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke. To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,Īnd palmeres for to seken straunge strondes, The droghte of march hath perced to the roote, And here are the opening lines, once again. In my previous post on Iambic Pentameter (The Basics), I quoted the opening to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, saying I would take a look at it in a later post.

With the Prologue, meter tells us the story of Chaucer’s language and how he spoke it. In my post on Shakespeare I wrote that a masterfully written metrical poem has two stories to tell – two tales: one in its words the other in its meter.

English scansion