Sylvester, Louise.
Gail Ashton and Louise Sylvester, eds. Teaching Chaucer (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 81-95.
Explores an apparent disconnect between pedagogical goals of classes that study Chaucer's literature and those that study the history of the English language, suggesting that sociolinguistic approaches can help bridge the gap.
Pugh explores opportunities for defining gender conventions of romance by examining parodies: knightly masculinity in Guerin's "Long-Assed Berenger" and in Th, and gender construction in episodes from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."
Jost, Jean E.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 8.1: 61-69, 2000.
Recommends a learning-centered approach to teaching CT in which students collaborate to produce a creative imitation of Chaucer's work. Description of college-level assignment included.
Raybin, David.
Helen Phillips, ed. Chaucer and Religion (Cambridge: Brewer, 2010), pp. 189-95.
Offers approaches to teaching ethics and spirituality in CT. Provides models and suggestions for teaching CT, and for preparing seminars and conferences designed for new or experienced teachers.
Includes thirteen essays by various authors and an introduction by the editor, all focusing on teaching medieval narratives that involve rape, attempted rape, or false accusation while attending to twenty-first-century awareness of rape, sexual…
Butler, Richard J.
[Jay Ruud, ed.] Papers on the "Canterbury Tales": From the 1989 NEH Chaucer Institute, Northern State University, Aberdeen, South Dakota ([Aberdeen, S.D.: Northern State University, 1989), pp. 211-36.
Presents for high school teachers several "exercises and activities that may be useful in a unit on Chaucer and the middle ages," including objectives, questions to consider, paper topics, audio-visual resources, and supplementary materials.
Describes the pedagogical use of museum objects (from the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame) in support of a Freshman Seminar in medieval literature, with particular focus on CT, Santiago de Compostela, and pilgrimage.
Hall, Kathryn A.
South Atlantic Review 72.4 (2007): 59-71.
Encourages pairing Margery Kempe and WBT in British literature surveys, noting that Kempe was "a good deal more vulnerable than the fictitious Wife of Bath."
Braswell, Mary Flowers.
Austin Sarat, Cathrine O. Frank, and Matthew Anderson, eds. Teaching Law and Literature (New York: Modern Language Association, 2011), pp. 155-61.
Offers a pedagogical unit in which advanced students explore similarities between CT (especially GP) and manor court records, capitalizing on Chaucer's familiarity with legal proceedings. Suggests that the "manor court seems to have influenced…
Clopper, Lawrence M.
Thomas A. Goodmann, ed. Approaches to Teaching Langland's "Piers Plowman" (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2018), pp. 112-19.
Treats GP and Langland's Prologue in relation to the traditional model of three estates, arguing that the order of the pilgrims in GP reveals inadequacies in the "trifunctional model" (fight, pray, labor) and alludes to the Fall of Humanity in the…
Pearsall, Derek.
R. F. Yeager and Brian W. Gastle, eds. Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower (New York: Modern Language Association, 2011), pp. 31-35.
Surveys Gower's reception among fellow poets and critics, including comments on the effect of Chaucer upon Gower's reputation and the value of comparing their versions of individual stories.
Cheng, Elyssa Y.
Patricia Haseltine and Sheng-Mei Ma, eds. Doing English in Asia: Global Literature and Culture (Langham, Md.: Lexington, 2016), pp. 69-85.
Reports briefly on the study of English language and literature in Taiwan and describes a pedagogy for teaching a course in early British literature, including discussion of the advantages of using, among others, a "painting and drawing technique" to…
Pedagogical strategies for exploring how Chaucer's early reception and apocrypha can be used to "engage students in some of the larger issues of literary history and canon formation," with comments on how to use twentieth- and twenty-first century…
Berlin, Dorthea.
[Jay Ruud, ed.] Papers on the "Canterbury Tales": From the 1989 NEH Chaucer Institute, Northern State University, Aberdeen, South Dakota ([Aberdeen, S.D.: Northern State University, 1989), pp. [176]-85.
Lists several pedagogical activities that pertain to GP.
Prescott, Anne Worthington.
Once and Future Classroom 1.1 (2002): n.p. [Web publication]
Describes a pedagogical session at a meeting of the New Chaucer Society, provides translations for several passages from HF, and lists nine questions concerning HF for discussion in high school classrooms.
McShane, Kara L.
Once and Future Classroom 9.1 (2013): n.p.
Lists and describes the pedagogical value of selected resources in the study of Chaucer, focusing on CT but not exclusively, and arranged in several categories: Language, Editions, Adaptations and Translations, Backgrounds, Social History, Reference…
Kindrick, Robert, moderator.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching, n.s., 2 (1991): 5-22.
Panelists (Larry Benson, John H. Fisher, Derek Pearsall, Alfred David) discuss recent difficulties and opportunities in teaching Chaucer, focusing on student interests and capabilities.
Because a Chaucer class is often a student's only medieval course, we should incorporate fifteenth-century Chaucerian writing into our classes to expose students to the active reception of literary works, the social and/or literary uses to which…
Pugh, Tison.
Karina F. Attar and Lynn Shutters, eds. Teaching Medieval and Early Modern Cross-Cultural Encounters (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 215-28.
Comments on the advantages of using new media to help students gain appreciation and expertise in studying Chaucer; includes descriptions of undergraduate classroom activities that use cinema, Chaucer blogs, YouTube videos of rap versions of…
Lewis, Bernard.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 20.1 (2013): 127-41.
Personal account of learning and teaching Chaucer in Middle English by a college student/instructor. Emphasizes oral performance, and includes summaries of student evaluations and descriptions of resources available for use by students and teachers.
Barrington, Candace.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 22 (2015): 21–32.
Describes writing assignments, for an upper-division Chaucer course, that help students read CT in Middle English. Demonstrates how breaking the assignments into smaller steps promotes a greater understanding of fluency and discovery of unfamiliar…
Benson, C. David.
Stephen J. Harris and Bryon L. Grigsby, eds. Misconceptions About the Middle Ages. Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture, no. 7 (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 240-53.
Benson advocates teaching Chaucer in Middle English, because the liveliness and vitality of Chaucer's language are lost in translation.
Theoretical studies of Chaucer often discourage student interest because of their difficulty and narrow focus. Teaching Chaucer to a diverse population in a small liberal arts college requires materials and activities such as videos, slides,…
