BA English Literature and American Studies

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The course focuses on a selection from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, along with some writing by Chaucer’s contemporaries, and more recent translators and adaptors such as Patience Agbabi. We will consider such central themes as genre, gender, constructions of the self and community. The lectures will provide a context for the selected texts and will aim to raise central issues and to stimulate debate. Two-hour weekly seminars will involve workshop elements to help you to read Chaucer’s Middle English and will also engage in close reading exercises; there will also be more traditional seminar time, supporting a more detailed study and analysis of the primary texts, taking in to consideration historical and cultural contexts but focusing in particular on criticism.

• To develop students’ exploration of the Middle English period through study, in the original language, of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales
• To develop a further understanding of relevant historical and cultural contexts
• To engage students with published criticism on Chaucer and to current critical debates in relation to his works
• To study other writing of the period
• To develop students’ research skills
• To develop a range of skills appropriate to a second year level of understanding medieval writing: written (including electronic forms) and verbal forms of expression; reflective or critical thinking; and the ability to organize material appropriately including into a coherent literary argument.

By the end of the course unit the successful student will have demonstrated:

• A capacity to read Chaucer in the original language and an understanding of the range and variety of his works
• An ability to engage critically with a range of Chaucer’s writing through the detailed study of particular tales and their place in a wider context
• An understanding of relevant cultural, historical and critical matters
• An ability to deploy a range of skills appropriate to a level 2 unit in understanding medieval writing: to work independently towards both the examination and the essay
• Developing the following range of skills: research, critical or reflective thinking, oral/aural (active listening), electronic retrieval; and to organize a coherent argument by paying attention to both close reading techniques and informed by an awareness of current critical debates

Supported by Blackboard, with links to such online resources as the Harvard Chaucer Webpages and the Metro site (support for Middle English language). Also, YouTube vides of performances by Patience Agbabi, Jean Breeze, and other modern poets.

• Read Chaucer in the original language;
• Understand the range and variety of his works;
• Engage critically with a range of Chaucer’s writing through the detailed study of particular tales and their place in a wider context;
• Understand relevant cultural, historical and critical matters; display an ability to deploy a range of skills appropriate to a level 2 unit in understanding medieval writing: to work independently towards both the examination and the essay;

Organize a coherent argument, paying attention to close reading techniques, with an awareness of current critical debates

• Retrieve, sift, organise, synthesise and critically evaluate material from a range of different sources, including library, electronic, and online resources;
• Deliver oral presentations in front of [[the instructor/ a seminar group]]; produce written work using appropriate language for an academic audience; produce written work that collects and integrates evidence to formulate/test a critical argument; 

Develop an argument on the basis of different kinds of evidence.

Empathise with cultural productions of a very different era from the students’ own.

Text exercise: translation, commentary and short essay 40%

Written and face-to-face (upon arrangement)

The set text is R. Boenig and A. Taylor, eds. The Canterbury Tales, 2nd ed. (Broadview,  2012). Make sure you do not buy the similar looking book by the same editors from the same press, with the title The Canterbury Tales: A Selection. 

Note that this edition has been selected to give you the maximum assistance in reading Chaucer’s Middle English, so please don’t be tempted to buy any other. Online editions (while they have their uses) are not acceptable for this course. 

You should begin by reading the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Although the precise details of the reading changes slightly each year, in 2017-18 we will certainly be looking at the prologues and tales of the Miller, Reeve, Cook, Wife of Bath, and Clerk. 

If you want to get ahead on critical reading, you could begin with Helen Cooper, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1996). For Chaucer’s immediate context, see Paul Strohm, The Poet’s Tale (Profile, 2015).