My reflections

The Pardoner’s Tale is really complex, but not because of the language, but because of the confusing format, of part frank confession, part moral lecture and part story, then back to talking to the group of pilgrims again. I don’t think I would have made much sense out of it without our drama exercises in class and those two bits of explanation that Stephen sent us.

This is the first time I’ve tried to read any of The Canterbury Tales. I’ve been surprised at how easy to understand it is. It looks really hard at first glance, but it seems quite easy to get into the language and begin understanding all of it except the few obsolete words. I’ve been really enjoying reading it out loud (to myself, I’m sure I sound like a madwoman!) I am particularly enjoying the rhythm – good old iambic pentameter! I like how Chaucer changes words to suit his purpose all over the place. I think if there was still such an open approach to spelling and use of words writing poetry might be a bit easier. I have found that sometimes I get carried away with reading for rhythm and have to reread to try and work out the meaning.

As the lesson plan suggests, I think it is important to introduce the format of The Canterbury Tales. That way when you look at a little bit of the text, you can understand it more. The comparison to contemporary road trip films would be useful. The roughness of the language, and the fact that Chaucer is reusing an old idea, make it seem ideal material to do drama activities from. Our exercises in class brought The Pardoner’s Tale to life. I definitely think they would be translatable into the classroom.
I liked the idea of getting students to ‘talk like a pilgrim’, and I think listening to some audio recordings of Chaucer is a great idea. Reading ‘Teach Yourself to Read Chaucer’s Middle English’ seems informative but a bit dry and it should be possible to come up with some more exciting group ways of doing the same stuff. Perhaps, if the equipment was available, small groups could work out the phonetic pronunciation of a small section together and then record it, taking turns to read a few lines each, which could be then put together to form a class reading of part of the tale.

I haven’t read The Wife of Bath’s tale yet – although I’m planning to. It seems like the issues it deals with are very relevant and accessible subjects. The Wife of Bath Debates activity seems like a good one. I like the way that it demonstrates the concept of answering one point with another. I’m not sure what age group this is meant for, but for many children the ‘church fathers’ extracts would be quite long and heavy going. Completing the sheet might take some time too. Since the questions are interesting and contentious I would be inclined to instigate debates – perhaps using the church fathers and the Wife of Bath’s points as starting points then getting children to say what they think. They could be encouraged to use the same format – making a statement, backing it up, countering with a logical answer. This could lead to a discussion on the differences in the attitudes to marriage and gender equality between Chaucer’s time and now. This is getting a bit cross-curricular – PSHE and History.

I’m enjoying studying Chaucer. I think perhaps the one thing I want to remember for teaching it in the future is that although it doesn’t look too intimidating, it does take quite a lot of time to get into it and understand it. It is poetry, after all, and therefore dense with meaning and interpretation, and there’s loads of it!

A group recording of the text is a really good idea, i'd thought about getting pupils to record parts of the text but a complete class recording would be really good. They could do the description in the General prologue, which would be shorter than the tale.