The Canterbury Tales – A Retelling

The Clerk’s Prologue

Heere folweth the Prologe of the Clerkes Tale of Oxenforde

‘Come now, master scholar from Oxford,’ our Host exclaimed. ‘You have been as coy and quiet as a young virgin waiting for her first night in bed. You haven’t said a word throughout the journey. I suppose you are studying some great intellectual problem. But you know what wise Solomon believed? “There is a time for everything.”

‘For Christ’s sake cheer up, man! This is not the occasion to be serious. Tell us a funny story. Anyone who agrees to be part of the game must play by its rules. Isn’t that so? Don’t preach to us, in any case. That is for the friars. That is for Lent. Don’t start moaning about the sins of the world. And don’t tell us a tale that will bore us to death. Be jolly. Tell us about fantastic adventures. And don’t clothe everything with your Oxford rhetoric. We don’t want technical terms or figures of speech. They are for the secretaries of kings. Speak plainly in the language men use. Make sure that all of us here can understand you.’

The Oxford man answered him politely. ‘Host,’ he said, ‘I am under your authority. You are in charge. I will obey you in everything unless, of course, you become unreasonable. I will tell you a story I first heard from a worthy scholar at the university of Padua. He was a very learned man, and a good one. Alas he is now dead and nailed in his coffin. God give him rest.

‘This scholar was also a great poet, Francis Petrarch by name. Have you heard of him? His sweet rhetoric sugared the poetry of Italy. His colleague at Padua, Giovani di Lignano, did the same for law and rhetoric. But you won’t have heard of him. They have gone now. Death is no respecter of persons. It will not allow us to linger in the world. In an instant it had taken both of them. And we will all surely follow.

‘Let me tell you more about Petrarch himself. Before he recited this tale to me, he explained that he had composed it in a high style fitting its matter. He also told me that he had written a prologue before starting on the substance of the story. In this prologue he had described the area of Piedmont and its region of Saluzzo, where the action is set. He described the Apennine mountains that make up the western border of Lombardy. In particular he portrayed Mount Viso, highest of the mountains, where the river Po has its source in a little spring among the rocks. From there the river goes eastward, increasing all the way, towards Ferrara and lovely Venice before entering the sea. But that’s another story. It is irrelevant here, except as an introduction. Now that I have set the scene, I will get on with my tale.’