McClure’s Chaucer

The occasion (unlikely occasion) – The Band‘s Thanksgiving, 1977, “Farewell Concert” at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom (subsequently immortalized in Martin Scorsese‘s 1978 film, The Last Waltz).
The reader (similarly, perhaps?, unlikely) – Michael McClure reading the opening lines (from the Prologue) of Chaucer‘s classic “The Canterbury Tales“.

We continue with Old English and Middle English this week on the Allen Ginsberg Project

WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote

The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,

And smale fowles maken melodye,

That slepen al the night with open ye,

(So priketh hem nature in hir corages:

Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

And palmers for to seken straunge strondes,

To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;

And specially, from every shires ende

Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,

The holy blisful martir for to seke,

That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke

[ Bar border and initial’W'(han), with foliate and spray decoration at the beginning of the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales – Harley ms 1758 – Courtesy of the British Library]

Michael in glorious color, reading (from the Scorsese film) can be glimpsed here

2 comments

  1. I was Priviledged to have Studied Literature under McClure at the CCAC= PrivateART College. (70′)
    Jan 31, 2021
    He Was Dynamic!

  2. After taking McClure’s English Literature class in 1967-68 he spoke to me casually about how his students are no longer hip to his way of teaching. He had a creative way of teaching out of the box for artists.
    By Don Coles.

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