| Description |
Beginning with some of Chaucer's short poems, we will examine the linguistic and intellectual backgrounds of Chaucer's great (unfinished) masterwork,<u>The Canterbury Tales</u>. We will situate individual tales against medieval English and Continental writing and the Classics, but will primarily be interested in the kinds of noise that emerge in and between the tales: allusion, politics, insurrection, devotion, music, echo, repetition, contest, and requital. We'll start by learning how to convert silent Middle English text into spoken words, and move on to the larger question of how silence itself is figured in and against Chaucer's poetry. |