Sophie Gee

Yeah.

Really good.

Really good.

Okay.

So I want to explain to everyone why that first sentence is so extraordinary.

So the question I always ask my students when I teach this text is, if you were summarizing what the sentence said, if you were summarizing what's being said here, why?

i.e., you know, a whole bunch of people are going on a pilgrimage to see someone who has been murdered in the cathedral and is now a saint.

What would you start with?

And I think most people would start by explaining why you're going on a pilgrimage, what the religious explanation is.

And then maybe at some point you might say, well, we're kind of waiting until the weather gets a bit better because we don't really want to start in the middle of winter.

In other words, what we're expecting is that the story is going to start with religion.

Maybe it's going to start with class hierarchy.

Maybe it's going to plunge us straight into the incredibly tightly organized aristocratic and courtly and church bound medieval world.

Maybe it's going to do that.

It doesn't do any of that.

The pilgrims go on a pilgrimage, according to Chaucer, because they are alive to the wetness and the excitement and the greenery of the coming of spring.

And more than that, Chaucer doesn't even mention spring.

He doesn't mention the word spring in this opening.

He mentions that the drought of March has pierced April to the root.

It's completely drenched April.