Reflections on Chaucer readings and teaching ideas

Readings

I don’t remember much about studying “The Franklin’s Tale” at ‘A’ level ten years ago, only that I faced my fear and ended up enjoying it. I think that there is a stigma attached to “Chaucer” and “Shakespeare” but if you break the tales down into manageable chunks, you can get a lot of enjoyment out of reading and analysing them.

I found “The Pardoner discussed” and “The Death of a Salesman” very useful tools and I was interested to discover more about the role of pardoners within society and Chaucer’s portrayal of the pardoner as one of the pilgrims. I agree that “The Pardoner’s Tale” is particularly dramatic because it is told “almost exclusively in dialogue”. As such, it proved both a useful and enjoyable activity for us to act out the various parts of the tale in class and also helped me when reading the tale for myself.

Like Walter Clyde Curry, I think the pardoner, as someone who is so motivated by material gain and manipulative in doing his job, is someone to be pitied much like a modern day salesman (and in serious need of therapy!)

It was helpful to understand Curry’s perception of the pardoner as a eunuch and a homosexual and the psychological analysis of his character that I would not have interpreted myself.


Activity

Although the activity was short and simple, I think it would be a useful starter activity to do with a class as an introduction to Middle English. It shows just how similar Middle English is to Modern English and gives students confidence in understanding Chaucer.

Teaching Ideas

I really liked the website that provided all the activities for the classroom and especially liked the fact that there were so many extra resources available to help to put The Canterbury Tales into a historical and social context.

I thought the idea of linking the pilgrimage in The Canterbury Tales to films was a great idea and also thought the youtube clip rap version of The Canterbury Tales that we watched the other week would be a fun, light way to introduce the structure of the tales especially as many students will probably not appreciate what pilgrimages are. I think that it’s imperative to teach students how to read Middle English out loud as it increases the enjoyment of reading and understanding Chaucer and the quality of his poetry. I certainly benefitted more from reading it out loud.

I agree that time should be spent in class discussing the role of Chaucer as the host in the pilgrimage and as the poet who created the fictional characters of the pilgrims. It is helpful for students to understand that Chaucer’s own views are being portrayed through these characters and through the dialogue between the host and the pilgrims.

I have not read the “Wife of Bath’s Tale” (although it is next on my list) but it seems fairly obvious that some background knowledge of anti-feminist perspectives is needed for her character and tale to be fully understood. I think the idea of finding where the wife makes references to her ideas about marriage and virginity and writing them below the writings of St Paul and St Jerome is an excellent way of distinguishing the different arguments clearly. However, I think students would prefer producing some kind of role-play using the arguments as a basis.
I was intrigued to discover that Chaucer constructed the Wife of Bath’s character from literary sources such as La Vielle’s speech and it is always interesting to look at these sources to trace the similarities and to broaden our understanding. I like the idea of groups of students each taking a digestible section of the letter from “Goodman of Paris” and reporting back to the class. I thought this worked particularly well when we read “The Pardoner’s Tale” in sections. They could adapt the advice and write a persuasive piece in modern English and perform them for the rest of the class.

Finally, I thought that the notion of the students preparing a short oral or written response to a chosen question was a useful idea for assessing learning as most of the other activities seemed to revolve around group discussions.

I really like the idea of getting pupils to write their own piece of persuasive writing based on the material.

Are there any podcasts available?