Jamison, Carol.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 29 (2022): 111-22.
Offers advice on how an undergraduate course focusing on Chaucer can serve the curricula of both literary and linguistics programs. Proposes several learning outcomes, and provides classroom strategies and emphases whereby linguistic and literary…
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,…
LaBarge, Elizabeth.
Once and Future Classroom 15, no. 1 (2019): 107-15.
Offers evidence (including quotations from students) that teaching CT in a bilingual (English/Spanish) high school helps students to "feel part of the conversation in college" and "to reflect on their own lives and cultures." Moreover, such students…
Recounts the composition of a "troubadour-style" version of WBPT set to music (lyrics and link to audio recording included), describing its usefulness in teaching of Chaucer's work and various other benefits of using music in teaching English…
Introducing small readers' theatre productions of scenes from Chaucer into the classroom reinforces the sounds of Middle English for students, allows them to get personally involved in the class, focuses their attention more closely on Chaucer's…
Clifton, Nicole.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 25, no. 2 (2018): 123-43.
Describes an "upper-division Chaucer course that teaches Chaucerian English as a foreign language," aiming "to ensure that students learn to read Chaucer's language comfortably on their own." Provides sample lesson plans and assignments.
Reflects on the importance of incorporating the "professional and popular" representations of CT to enhance classroom teaching of Chaucer. Films, including Brian Helgeland's "A Knight's Tale," Jonathan Myerson's animated "Canterbury Tales" trilogy,…
Ashton, Gail, and Louise Sylvester, eds.
New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Nine essays on pedagogical topics by various authors, with web resources, suggestions for further reading, and index. The introduction (by Ashton) emphasizes the need for teachers to facilitate active learning. For individual essays, search for…
Clifton, Nicole.
Literature Compass 5.1 (2008): 158-64.
Pedagogical portfolio (containing material such as bibliography, sample syllabi, and discussion questions) for study of Middle English romances, including several works by Chaucer.
Waymack, Anna.
Medieval Feminist Forum 53.1 (2017): 150-75.
Contemplates the pedagogical issues involved in confronting rape in Chaucer's life and works, with emphasis on the life-records that pertain to Cecily Chaumpaigne--especially their ambiguities--and attention to the experiences of modern students and…
Advocates a pedagogical approach that encourages students to regard "what happens to Troilus" as the central concern of TC, leading them to discover that the poem expresses a generally approving view of passionate love modified by the frustration of…
Brown, Peter,and Andrew Butcher.
Literature and History 13 (1987): 1-13.
Teaching CT at the undergraduate level both as literature and as social and political history challenges student responses, questions the idea of Chaucerian character, and raises methodological problems.
Steiner, Emily, and Lynn Ransom, eds.
Philadelphia: The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, 2015.
Presents essays that explore ways that manuscript evidence is used to understand "literary, geographic, scientific, devotional, and hagiographical knowledge" in the later Middle Ages. For an essay that pertains to Chaucer, search for Taxonomies of…
Hardwick, Paul.
Paul Hardwick, ed. The Playful Middle Ages: Meanings of Play and Plays of Meaning: Essays in Memory of Elaine C. Block (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2010), pp. 81-91.
Explores relations between vernacularity and scatology in MilT and "Til Eulenspiegel," commenting on how use of the "kultour" in MilT plays upon the Knight's earlier reference to a plough and undermines clerical discourse in which the plough is a…
Ellis, Jeremy R.
Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Publishing, 1996.
A discursive lexicon of "dirty" language, sexual and scatological, including a brief section (pp. 8-14) on Chaucer's vocabulary, listing sample words and describing several scenes and examples from MilT, WBP, and elsewhere. Reprinted under the title…
Schotland, Sara Deutch.
Albrecht Classen and Marilyn Sandidge, eds. Friendship in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Explorations of a Fundamental Ethical Discourse (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), pp. 525-41.
Canacee's kindness toward the formel eagle shows Chaucer's sympathy for women and appreciation of female friendship. The formel, like other females in Chaucer, has been abused by men--and warns Canacee against them. In creating a painted mew for the…
Baswell, Christopher (C.)
Charlotte Cook Morse, Penelope Reed Doob, and Marjorie Curry Woods, eds. The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), pp. 121-60.
Medieval habits of reading characteristically produce "a voicing and an inscription of that voicing" (123), allowing for a fluidity of margin and text, reader and author. Geffrey's position as author and glossed text in LGWP and the Wife's position…
Matlock, Wendy A.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 217-31.
Explores anthropomorphism and the "connaturality" of human and nonhuman animals in PF and Lydgate's "Debate of the Horse, Goose, and Sheep," noting the comments of medieval and modern philosophers on the traditional animal-human binary. Lydgate's…
Raybin, David.
Frank Grady, ed. The Cambridge Companion to "The Canterbury Tales" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 244-49.
Reviews personal experiences of helping secondary teachers learn how to approach and teach Chaucer. Offers both a summary of the necessity of this kind of outreach and the results of these types of interactions.
