Fall 2005 Courses

English 303: Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales (Tarnoff)

TTh 10:10-11:40
HUM 226

In this course, we will explore a series of roadside tales about love, sex, and murder told by an eclectic group of men and women on their way to a holy shrine. We will look at how the storytellers, who come from "every shires ende," help us to envision late medieval English society and to transport us imaginatively across the channel to Brittany, Flanders, and Syria.  As we focus on close readings of the General Prologue and of nine tales in Middle English (other tales may be read in Modern English translations), we will attend to the ways that genre (romance, fabliau, beast fable, sermon) shapes representations of gender, of the body, and of geographical and architectural space. We will also delve into selections from Chaucer's own literary models, including the Decameron and the Roman de la Rose (which Chaucer himself translated), as well as from John Mandeville's fourteenth-century narrative describing travels through the Holy Land and the Orient. Requirements will include two papers, a series of short written exercises, and a final exam.

Fall 2005 Course Listings