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Course Description

Summary

Our overriding aim is simple: to read, discuss, write about, and generally immerse ourselves in Geoffrey Chaucer's masterworks, The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde. In that process, we'll aim to get sufficiently comfortable with Middle English to read, delight in, and even imitate that rich language. We'll also consider something of Chaucer's life and times as necessary corollaries to understanding his work, and dip into the colossal industry that constitutes Chaucerian scholarship. As we focus on the works as literature, students will do plenty of reading aloud, discussing, and writing regularly assigned brief responses and two longer papers, in addition to presentations, OED exploration, and online discussion.