ABSTRACT
Geo rey Chaucer (c.1342-1400) is easily the greatest poet in the English language before Shakespeare. Indeed, he can be considered the rst. He is a bridge between Old English and the early Modern English of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. There is a case for believing, as I do, that children should, at the very least, be made familiar with a piece of his work. Of course his words look strange to us, but when we look at the beginning of his greatest work, The Canterbury Tales, we can see that much of the presumed di culty is super cial:
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which vertu engendred is the our . . .
