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The aim of this class is to familiarize students with the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, the most well-known and most influential medieval English writer. After a few sessions that are meant to introduce the historical and cultural context which is necessary to study any late medieval writer, we will study Chaucer’s works chronologically, beginning with his very short dream visions about lovesick knights, the multiplication and dissemination of rumors, and a parliament of birds. Next, we will read Chaucer’s version of the tragic love story of Troilus and Criseyde, before engaging with Chaucer’s famous Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories told by pilgrims on the way to Canterbury, who variously reflect on the bawdy nature of student life, on the amorous abilities of former husbands, on the agonies of wifely fidelity, on the pastoral responsibilities of (crooked) pardoners, and so on. Students should acquire (and read!) the following texts by the beginning of the semester: Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, trans. Nevill Coghill (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971); Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, trans. David Wright (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). |
