>Joyce read to me once the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, stopping often to repeat the lines and retaste the elegant humour of each one.>"Of all English writers Chaucer is the clearest. He is as precise and slick as a Frenchman."What the hell is Joyce talking about? Chaucer isn't clear at all. I don't get half the shit he says.
>>25288220It's crazy that Chaucer so early on figured out the definitive optimal and most natural form of poetry for the English language (heroic couplets) and then everyone just completely stopped writing them after the 18th century.
>>25288247>the definitive optimal and most natural form of poetry for the English language (heroic couplets) Rhyme is no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to thir own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse then else they would have expressed them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish Poets of prime note have rejected Rhyme both in longer and shorter Works, as have also long since our best English Tragedies, as a thing of it self, to all judicious eares, trivial and of no true musical delight: which consists only in apt Numbers, fit quantity of Syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one Verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned Ancients both in Poetry and all good Oratory.
>>25288259Milton was wrong about this. His poetry was excellent but it would have been even more excellent if it was written in heroic couplets. End rhymes are very natural and intuitive for English verse; indeed, Eliot himself noted that, prior to Milton, most examples of "blank verse" in English should more accurately be called "unrhymed verse" since they practically begged for a rhyme to complete them.
>>25288267>His poetry was excellent but it would have been even more excellent if it was written in heroic couplets.Dryden adapted Paradise Lost into heroic couplets, and, guess what, it sucks ass.>Changed as we are, we're yet from homage free;>We have, by hell, at least gained liberty:>That's worth our fall; thus low though we are driven,>Better to rule in hell, than serve in heaven.Samuel Johnson said it best.>But whatever be the advantage of rhyme I cannot prevail on myself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer, for I cannot wish his work to be other than it is.
>>25288292Two things to note. First, Dryden wrote his version in about a month. He evidently didn't give his own adaptation the time, effort, or respect it deserves.Second, Milton's raw poetic genius no doubt eclipsed Dryden's. Thus, it can be plausibly assumed that Milton could have written Paradise Lost in just about any style of verse and it would have been superior to Dryden's rendition. But, that doesn't itself refute the idea that, had Milton chosen to write his poem in heroic couplets, the result would likely surpass the work as it stands.
>>25288220Something about the Irish preference for the French-speaking and highly cultured Norman conquerer over the unwashed barely literate sons of illegal migrant Saxons.
>>25288497>Something about the Irish preference for the French-speaking and highly cultured Norman conquerer over the unwashed barely literate sons of illegal migrant Saxons.
>>25288247you simply can't use words like 'definitive optimal and most natural' when talking about literature imo. it isn't something like agriculture or engineering. in fact as soon as literature starts to feel like agriculture or engineering (e.g. at the end of the 18th century) you *need* to drive it toward a strange unexplored future.
