phew - remembered my password - its been a while!

The Death of a Salesman article made me realise how important it is not to patronise the time that Chaucer was writing in. When you think of the 14th Century its easy to think of a diseased, simple country with no time for poetry. Add to this the unfamiliar spelling, that might also be seen as simple - and pupils could be forgiven for thinking that any hype about Chaucer is overstated. But a recurring theme in all the readings is the fact that so much of The CTs is still relevant today. I liked the bit in The Pardoner Discussed: "Like many others after him, he uses a real rhetorical gift to "stir the people to devotion" " - this shows the clear similarities between The Pardoner, and a vote-seeking politician perhaps, and then there's the issue of corruption in religion which is as pertinent now as ever. The part in Death of a Salesman about Chaucer's understanding of psychology also particularly stood out for me. So i think that this kind of preparatory knowledge is key to enjoying the text.

With this in mind, the Meet the Pilgrims activity seems a good idea, and perhaps there are clearer examples available than The Wizard of Oz as a comparison for the youth of today! (What's that animated film with the toaster and the hoover etc?)

Then, like we did, the next sensible stage seems to be introducing the language - and I agree with other posts that sound-recordings = good! I found when we heard the recording that matching the sounds to the words makes the links between Chaucer's English and our own clearer.

In The Pardoner Discussed the part about the originality of the stories of Chaucer was interesting - and would be useful in the classroom I think. The CTs would be a perfect opportunity to reinforce the fact that the author is much more than a story teller.

As well as being useful for the Pardoner's Tale, the Esitement stuff made The Wife of Bath's Tale sound very teachable. The activities based on issues of perceived femininity seemed particularly interesting and is something I'd like to explore further, but I'll have to read the tale first.

The film about the hover and the toaster, is it called: The Brave Little Toaster? Looking at The Wife of Bath and feminist issues sounds really interesting, must ask you what the Esitement stuff is.