Poetic Meter in Canterbury Tales

[Charles Darnay]

I've been trying to determine the dominant meter throughout Canterbury Tales - and am having some trouble with it. I know there are people on this site far better than me when it comes to metrical analyzation and I was wondering if anyone can help me.

Does Canterbury Tales have a dominant meter and if so, what is it?

After looking at the prolouge, I thought that it was Iambic Pentamiter but now I am not so sure.

[Petrarch's Love]

Hi Charles Darnay--The Canterbury Tales is indeed written in iambic pentameter, that is one thing that has helped scholars reconstruct the Middle English pronunciation. Do you have a reliable guide to that pronunciation in your copy of the Tales? That can really help to hearing the regularity of the meter. Here's a website that has links to a number of audio clips which can help you to hear the meter better, and are also just a lot of fun to listen to: http://academics.vmi.edu/english/audio/audio_index.html
There's also a link from that site to an online tutorial for Middle English pronunciation on Harvard's Chaucer site which might be helpful (both these sites have a ton of info on Chaucer and his language if you care to poke around a bit. If you have access to a university library (or possibly a very good public library) they'll probably have a complete recording of the Tales you could listen to as well. Have fun with the Canterbury Tales.:)

[Charles Darnay]

thanks so much for your help

[ballb]

Decasyllabic couplets