Re: Geoffrey Chaucer

From the Athens of Texas, Randy Black writes: "In my high school senior English literature class in Dallas, 1965, our "old as dirt" teacher, Mrs. Stewart, required us to learn at least 30 lines of the Canterbury Tales prologue in Middle English. I got into a contest with two of my pals, one destined for Harvard, the other for Princeton, me for lowly Oklahoma, and before I knew it, we had memorized about 200 lines or more. It was a mess to begin with, but once you got the hang of the lyrics, and had a grasp of the language as it was then, it seemed to flow right along. I recall that we studied/listened to long play record albums of the actor David Niven's recitations of the Middle English verse. (Texas is not all hicks playing football and and basketweaving classes for the players.) I can still recite about the first 50 lines of the prologue to this day. It still haunts me from time to time, usually after a bit too much Tequila".
 
Here's a link: http://www.librarius.com/canttran/gptrfs.htm
 
 RH: The University of Oklahoma lowly? It has some WAISers.