Chaucer

This course is devoted to an intensive study of the Canterbury Tales, a work that founds the English literary tradition. Written at the end of the fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer’s composition is a fascinating medley of stories that range from the serious and pious, to the unabashedly earthy and outrageously funny.The tales are told by a cast of memorable pilgrims that include a dashing knight, a drunken miller, a bookish young scholar, a monk, a conniving pardoner, a self-indulgent nun, and a bold and enterprising Wife. Students are introduced to a range of genres—from epic, satire, allegory and romance to fable, elegy, dream-vision, autobiography, and travel narrative. In piecing together Chaucer’s portraitof late medieval society, readers will discover how the Poet reflects and distorts social and political realities, rendering a colorful portrait of late medieval life that appears strangely familiar six hundred years later.

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