The Canterbury Tales General Prologue, complete reading (Middle English)

The famed prologue to the Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, read aloud and set to rousing medieval music, with timestamps. Follow along with the beautiful rhythms of medieval English poetry, and learn how to pronounce Middle English.

00:00 - Introduction
02:09 - Knight
03:58 - Squire
05:13 - Yeoman
06:06 - Prioress
08:37 - Monk
10:52 - Friar
14:05 - Merchant
14:51 - Clerk from Oxford
16:05 - Sergeant at Law
17:19 - Franklin
18:55 - Haberdasher & Carpenter
19:49 - Cook
20:18 - Shipman
21:33 - Doctor of Medicine
23:15 - Wife Of Bath
24:57 - Parson
27:41 - Ploughman
28:32 - Miller
29:44 - Manciple
30:44 - Reeve
32:36 - Summoner
34:59 - Pardoner
37:21 - Chaucer the Pilgrim's Narration
38:59 - Host's offer of Tale competition
43:28 - Drawing lots and setup to Tales.

Please consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get bonus content, early access, and even custom readings, and I genuinely appreciate all the support.

Subscribe to see ancient lit and other high culture vids every Monday, along with classic English readings, pop culture and other surprising stuff on Friday!

Follow me on social media:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

#medieval #chaucer #poetry

[ParticularlyRudeOne]

[Personal Bookmark]

00:02 - Prelude
02:09 - Knight
03:58 - Squire
05:13 - Yeoman
06:06 - Prioress
08:37 - Monk
10:52 - Friar
14:05 - Merchant
14:51 - Clerk from Oxford
16:05 - Sergeant at Law
17:19 - Franklin
18:55 - Haberdasher & Carpenter
19:49 - Cook
20:18 - Shipman
21:33 - Doctor of Medicine
23:15 - Wife Of Bath
24:57 - Parson
27:41 - Ploughman
28:32 - Miller
29:44 - Manciple
30:44 - Reeve
32:36 - Summoner
34:59 - Pardoner
37:21 - Chaucer the Pilgrim's Narration
38:59 - Host's offer of Tale competition
43:28 - Drawing lots and setup to Tales.

[edcrikey]

It would be amazing if you would gradually read through all of the Tales. The only other reading of the Prologue on YouTube that is up to this standard is incomplete and the work of a professor. You definitely deserve much more attention. Here's hoping your community grows.

[andrewquintanawrites]

Best reading of Chaucer on YouTube. PLEEASE do the whole tales when your feeling better.

[mattheweppley]

I love your voice and the meticulous attention to Middle English pronunciation that you put into this recording. It sounds very authentic and engaging. Thank you, good sir, and please keep up the excellent work!! :-)

[randomduderd]

I just love the cadence of middle English so much
My cousin once recited the first few lines of the prologue to me and I've been trying to find a good recording of it ever since-and now here it is!

[revereconsultants]

Unbelievable. When I went full screen, the General Prologue was easier to follow. I heard the Middle English vowels and saw them at the same time. There were three sounds to my ear: English, French, German. The inclusion of what I thought were those guttural sounds - if I were able to read by myself, granted at an extremely slow pace, those would be completely overlooked by me unless I kept repeating Loch Ness and caught a plane to Scotland while doing it. It took me a bit to adjust to your vocalization; it required paying careful attention to sound and sense. Glad I did. Thank you so much! Beautiful.

[livingwitheland]

This was a wonderful reading and you have just the right voice for it! The attention to pronunciation and accent is impressive too, best readings of Chaucer available on the internet in my opinion.

[Scratch]

I learned the first few stanzas over 23 years ago in AP English with my teacher Mrs. Fourtner in junior year of highschool.
I recite it regularly, with a few errors...
Everyone thinks I'm speaking in tounge then I explain the simple rhymes that make up this work.

"The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne."
Is my favorite line.

[bunnybgood]

This is fabulous. What a beautiful voice.

[MK-ovzx]

This rendition sounds so natural! One can almost hear how the Englisc and Norman French melded here— creating Middle English— Reading along to this amazing dictation makes this almost perfectly transparent in meaning… while keeping it from being a dry, literal translation that would negate the nuance and musicality of the original.

[jacobgoering]

Really appreciate this! Earlier Englishes can be hard to break into for various reasons, but this is a wonderful resource!

[darkjapan]

This is so fantastic! I hope you are feeling better!

[susmitarrannaghar]

Thank you so much for uploading this. God bless your soul.

[sayaabney]

This is lovely, thank you! I was hoping to find someone reading this in Middle English since all I had ever heard was the first lines. One of the few things I would rather listen to than read :) so glad that I found this video!

[czmAvery]

Thank you for helping me read along to this text for my assignment this semester. It's nice to hear the original intonation+sounds. Plus, as a bonus, there are quite a few words I don't need to look up, because hearing how they sound relates them to the modern English words (more than their written form).

[ChristianJiang]

Wow I’m so lucky! I came across this video and everyone is asking for a part II! So I thought “I’ll probably need to wait for it as well” but, as soon as I checked the channel, I saw that the 2nd part is already out! And it was uploaded very recently as well!

[LUCID_ENGLISH]

Wonderful rendition..👏👏👏Thanks a lot..❤.I just got immersed in

[blackarry]

I'd just taken quite a little sip of tea... and then I found myself able to understand almost every word.

[howardstrauss]

This is so wonderful. I cried before i played. During. 1:46. Acnient lit dude! Thanks man.

[СергейСеменов-дн]

Oh Brill! This is telling us why we can hear thickest dialects sounds in separate words like
wards (=words), speych (=speech), speyk (=speak), keyp (=keep), rood (=road), moost (=most) Absolutely brill.