The more I think about what Prof. Sutherland said in his second lecture the more I want to bring various aspects together.

Clearly, he is right in what he says about the way in which the language that Chaucer writes in has moved so much nearer to that which we use today.  I think this is especially true if you read it aloud as I have been doing with the Prologue, character by character.  (I will soon have the best educated Bears in the Western Hemisphere.)  On the page, even in the mind, it can still seems formidable, but the moment you hear the ‘swing’ of it the meaning somehow begins to fall into place. 

The notion that this is in great part because of the incoming Normans is also one with which I have no difficulty.  The grammatical structures are much more familiar and this is undoubtedly because, for the most part, the grammar that we use today is a reflection of that used in Continental languages.  (OK, I know that’s a gross over generalisation - I’m a grammarian for goodness sake - but it’s still, broadly speaking, true.)  And, there is the also the adoption of much of the Norman vocabulary.  (Others might put these factors the other way round, but they would be lexicographers!)

This all comes together along with the influence of the subject matter about which Chaucer writes, and the push from the centre to unify the country, to create a poetry that is very different from that found in Beowulf.  And yet......

And yet there is something that remains.  Technically speaking, I think it’s in the rhythm.  This is still a stress based language, not the syllabic language of Continental Europe, and those stresses still have the pattern that was prevalent back in the time before the Conquest.  But, there’s something more, something that has come from the earlier period and which is still a hallmark of the English today and that’s the humour.  In Beowulf it was the humour of the playground, here it is a form of humour that will go on through the years via writers such as Austen into the present day; here it is irony.

Time and again Chaucer describes a character in a way which on the surface seems absolutely straight and then, poker faced, completely undermines the portrait he’s drawn by the detail he includes.  The most obvious examples all come from the religious figures, for whom, with the exception of the Priest, Chaucer seems to have very little time.  Here he is on the Nun Prioress:

But sikerly she hadde a fair forheed;

It was almost a spanne brood, I trowe;

For, hardily, she was nat undergrowe.

Ful fetis was hir cloke, as I was war.

Of smal coral aboute hir arm she bar

A peire of bedes, gauded al with grene;

And ther-on heng a broche of gold ful shene,

On which ther was first write a crowned A,

And after, Amor vincit omnia.

This is no pious woman, but rather a sensual lady.  Chaucer shouldn’t have been able to see her broad forehead; it should have been covered by her wimple.  But the fashions of the day.......  And what’s all this about jewellery and love conquering all?  Let’s be charitable and assume it is Heavenly love to which she is referring. 

There is something very very English about this, as much twenty-first century as fourteenth.