Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

FAIN: FV-50363-13

Eastern Illinois University (Charleston, IL 61920-3099)
David Raybin (Project Director: March 2013 to July 2015)

A four-week school teacher seminar for participants on Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, to be held in London with additional site visits to Canterbury and Oxford.

We propose a four-week Seminar for School Teachers on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to be team-taught in London, England. The Seminar will explore how Chaucer looks out upon the world, as participants consider the relevance of Chaucer's poetry for readers now, that is, how his vivid ideas on human relationships and desires mesh with and yet challenge modern attitudes. As we progress through the tales, we will join together in making discoveries about the distance that separates us from the lived details of Chaucer's fourteenth-century England; about the continuities of artistry, philosophy, emotion, and meaning that render Chaucer's writings still important; and about the variety of responses to Chaucer that combine to achieve understandings inherently richer than those reached by reading alone. Participants will read the Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English, and we will visit historical sites in London, Canterbury, and Oxford relevant to an appreciation of the text.