How would one read The Canterbury Tales?

[bilsonite]

When reading The Canterbury Tales out loud, how would one read it?

When April with his showers sweet with fruit
The drought of March has pierced unto the root
And bathed each vein with liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower;
When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath,
Quickened again, in every holt and heath,
The tender shoots and buds, and the young sun
Into the Ram one half his course has run,
And many little birds make melody

Would one read it and stress the rhyme, or would one read it in accordance to the punctuation?

[Rosalind]

First off, are you reading this for an assignment? Or, to put it bluntly--do you have to use this text? No offense, but it doesn't look like a very good translation, and personally I think it's more fun to say in the orignal English anyway. There are some great recordings available of experts reading this passage which you might want to check out. Try the audio section under 'Chaucer's Works' at the Chaucer Metapage.

For this part, I'd read it stressing the rhyme, because the first bit--the celebration of spring--is supposed to be a certain kind of poem (forgot what it's called...), as opposed to the rest, which is a story told in verse. So I guess you'd emphasize the fact that it is a poem.

[ballb]

I agree with Rosalind. Reading a modern version of Chaucer much is lost in translation. Does anyone know if there exists a full audio version of the Tales in Middle English?

[lilbrattyteen]

And if you do want to read it in modern English, do NOT get a prose translation. I picked one up by mistake one time and it was horrible.

[em[ily]]

http://www.librarius.com/cantlink/audiolk.htm
this link has nearly all of the stories read aloud with text to accompany, I can't vouch for the quality of the translations, but they seem to be read by scholars mostly so I can't imagine it'd be too bad