Than mote we to bokes that we fynde,
Thurgh whiche that olde thinges ben in mynde,
And to the doctrine of these olde wyse
Yeve credence, in every skyful wise,
That tellen of these olde appreved stories
Of holynesse, of regnes, of victories,
Of love, of hate, of other sondry thynges,
Of whiche I may not maken rehersynges.
And yf that olde bokes were aweye,
Yloren were of remembraunce the keye.
Wel ought us thanne honouren and beleve
These bokes, there we han noon other preve. --Geoffrey Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women

Dr. Derrick G. Pitard
Class Meeting:
Office: SWC 313 L
Office Hours:
Contact: (738-)2369, or
However you get in touch with me, make sure you have a response before you assume I have gotten the message!

Here are the goals for this course. Students will:

• display a familiarity with Chaucer’s works and the cultural context in which they were written;
• display a familiarity with Chaucerian Middle English, including its vocabulary, pronunciation, syntax, spelling conventions, and the reasons for its differences from earlier and later varieties of English;
• demonstrate an ability to build upon this knowledge to formulate their own oral and written arguments;
• and actively participate in making meaning through reading, writing, and discussion, while exhibiting curiosity about and respect for the lives and viewpoints of people from Chaucer’s period.

We have, then, much to learn! The first part is the material, including both the texts and how to read them. The Canterbury Tales will provide our focus, since Chaucer gives us there a microcosm of the world he sees around him. Valiant heroes, corrupt priests, lecherous old men, and naïve and bawdy women both tell his tales and appear as characters in them. They are some of the most bizarre and wonderful stories ever written.

Then, we need to be able to express what we learn and its importance. There will be several parts to this process. It begins with what happens in class. This will be complimented by some short projects you will do to become familiar with his language. I know his language can be an obstacle at first, and familiarity with Middle English will take several weeks, but it will happen. I assume no knowledge of the language at all to begin with. From this level we will gradually enlarge our understanding to become familiar with various aspects of the culture as a whole. One of these ways will be to have ourselves a medieval feast. The fullest articulations of your knowledge will come in the paper you will write at the end of term.

There will be a lot for you to express. It will be to your benefit and enjoyment to cultivate a geeky fascination with the later middle ages (which I'll repeatedly model for you!). Geoffrey Chaucer lived from about 1340-1400. The later fourteenth century in England, and Europe, was pretty hectic period of history. There were in fact two competing popes, and England at the time saw the development of its only native heresy, Lollardy. France, Germany, and Italy were not nations in the modern sense, but were more like loosely joined confederations of (pretty antagonistic) city-states. War in the east, against the Muslims, was a constant. The murder rate in medieval London was several times higher than even the worst modern American city. The king himself had trouble maintaining authority; rebels took arms in at least one armed rebellion against him, in 1381, and even beheaded the Archbishop of Canterbury, the chief ecclesiastic official in England. We, like Chaucer, also live in a pretty upsetting period in history: we can learn a lot from Chaucer about how to heal what hurts us.

• The Canterbury Tales: Fifteen Tales and the General Prologue, ed V.A. Kolve and Glending Olson.
• Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World, by Donald Howard
• The Medieval Cookbook, by Maggie Black. This is not required, but very helpful! We are having a medieval feast later this term, before Thanksgiving! We therefore need to cook medieval dishes to entertain our medieval guests!
• Bring a letter-sized manila-type folder in to class ASAP.

There are several parts to this; we will decide on the relative value of each of these parts of the course as a class during the first week (see below under Grading).

1. Contribution to class. The classroom is an idea incubator. As you develop ideas test them out--let them develop by bouncing off of the rest of us. This is why what happens in class is the foundation of all other work. Writing and speaking are very closely related forms of communication, and working on one inevitably helps the other. I will let you know in private if I feel that you are not contributing as much as you can, or it will come up in the course of class discussion. I would suggest you err on the side of contributing too much, and leave it up to someone else to say whether you are carrying on too much (which does not happen too often). If at any time you are unclear about where you stand, raise the issue with me in privateor in class.
2. Short projects. There will be four of these due during term. They are designed to get you acquainted with the linguistic medium in which Chaucer composed, which is wonderfully plastic in many ways compared to Modern English.
3. Quizzes. There will be 4 or 5 of these during term, and they are designed to see how well you are reading. They are simple and factual--an opportunity to help your grade, if you've been keeping up with the reading. They will include the translation of a few lines, and some factual questions about the reading which are pretty literal, not interpretive. I will drop the lowest grade.

4. Papers. There is one of these, formatted in MLA Style. Feel free to build upon work you have already done for your projects. It is a minimum of 8 pages.
5. The Feast! This will be some time during October; we will decide on a date together. We will cook it and eat it, and learn something about medieval culture in the process. Hopefully I can drag some other departments along to contribute. You will get credit for eating. You will be responsible for a dish and having fun.
6. Final Exam. There will be a final exam which will test your knowledge of the whole course.

1. All work must be completed to pass the course.
2. All procedures pass through a memo. This memo form must be used to request an excused absence or a late paper, or for any other formal request you may want to make. This will be put in your folder to make a paper trail for all business in the course. Staple to it any documentation you'll need.
3. Absence policy:
   • There are two unexcused absences permitted during the term--one week. After this, I will penalize your FINAL course grade by 10 points for each unexcused absence. If you want an excused absence, get in touch beforehand and fill out the memo form. Attach to it documentation of a very good excuse. Treat attendance like going to work: you can't just miss a day without giving adequate notice (though adequate notice does not necessarily qualify the reason as excusable).
   • If you miss a class for any reason, you need to fill out a memo form for that day. This is not a form to ask for an excuse, and this is not a punishment; it is to make sure that you keep up with what is going on in the course.
   • If you miss more than 3 weeks of the course--even if you have outstanding reasons for doing so--I will ask you to withdraw from the course. If you miss more than 20% of the course, I just can't give you credit for the course because so much of the learning actually happens in the classroom.
4. If you turn in late work, points will be deducted without a valid excuse. For each day that an assigment is late, 5% will be deducted from its grade. I realize that there are other commitments, but you have committed now to this class, too. If you need to turn in something late, clear it with me beforehand and, again, fill out this memo form: don't wind up disappointed with an excuse that you thought was good enough (it has happened).
5. Work must be finished on the day assigned. If it is not, or if you are not otherwise prepared for class, you may be asked to leave and to take an unexcused absence for the day.

The grading in the class goes by a points system, which will make it easy for you to calculate your final grade at the end of the course. Below is the points breakdown. You will get an A with 270-300, a B with 240-269 points, a C with 210-239 points, and a D with 180-209 points. Below that is failing. They are broken down as follows:
• The four language projects are worth 140 points (35 points each);
• The in-class reading quizzes are worth 40 points (10 points each)--there are five, and I won't count the lowest grade;
• The final paper is worth 70 points;
• Cooking the dish and attending the feast is worth 20 points (however your food tastes!);
• The final exam is worth 40 points;
• This actually makes 310 points--which means that you have 10 potential extra credit points.
I will grade you with this form at the end of term. Note that I have to give a grade based on work that you have done--I can't give a good grade for being a hard worker ("effort") if you at the same time (for whatever reason) haven't been able to complete work for the course. If your paper grades improve over the course of the term, this is concrete evidence. If you feel you are working hard and they still aren't, ask about it!