Description
After the Norman Conquest of 1066 the English language and English literature came fully into their own in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and some of his contemporaries in the later fourteenth century. This course will concentrate on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: we will read some of the Tales and “translate” parts of them in tutorial, for which elementary Middle English grammar will be studied. In order to understand these remote texts properly, the lectures will deal with aspects of the cultural history of the Middle Ages: social structure, church and clergy, ideas about nature, love, sex, marriage, dress and food, life and death, and especially the tension between ideal and reality.
Course objectives
Reading and translation of fourteenth-century English; elementary Middle English grammar; cultural history of the Middle Ages; oral production and interaction in Modern English.
Time table
Click here for the timetable
Teaching method
One hour lecture and one hour seminar per week.
Test method
Written short-question examination.
Blackboard
This course is not supported by Blackboard.
Required reading
The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, Oxford University Press Paperback, 1988.
Reader with background material.
Registration
Students can register through U-twist before 15 July. After 15 July students can only register through the Departmental Office.
Contact
English Department, P.N. van Eyckhof 4, room 102c. Phone: 071 527 2144, or by mail: english@hum.leidenuniv.nl.