Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

ENGLISH 115B Subject & Catalog Number

Description

What makes stories so pleasurable and revealing but also so enraging and dangerous? How are we to think about the strong emotions they evoke and learn to resist as well as appreciate their power? This course revisits Geoffrey Chaucer's classic fourteenth-century poem, The Canterbury Tales: the deepest and most caustically entertaining analysis of storytelling ever written. The Canterbury Tales consists of a series of tales told by members of a pilgrimage on their way from London to Canterbury, representatives of the internally divided social world of Chaucer’s England. Some are serious, others funny, obscene, or offensive; some are religious, others not at all; some deal with issues local to England, others range across the Europe and the rest of the known world; many are told against other pilgrims. Written in a long-ago past, the poem jumps off the page, in turns unrecognisably weird and startlingly modern. We read the poem in the language in which it was written, Middle English, easy and fun to learn with early help: no previous experience with the language, or with the medieval era, is necessary. We will also explore the poem's long-ranging impact on English literature, including several contemporary reimaginings. Classes include a short lecture on a tale, and class discussion, which continues in weekly sections. Course projects include an essay, a collaborative report on one tale, and a creative option. Students of all years and from all concentrations and programs are welcome. If you are a graduate student interested in taking this class, please contact Prof. Watson to indicate interest before term begins; there may be an additional graduate section if there is sufficient demand.