11:15A-12:30p TR (30) 3 cr

Chaucer (ca. 1343-1400) is perhaps the best known of the late medieval English poets. He wrote in a wide range of genres--romance, dream vision, saint's life, fabliau, and others--and was later regarded as the "Father of English Poetry." We will explore the variety of his work in the Canterbury Tales , but we will spend about two weeks on a dream vision, the Parlement of Foulys , in order to learn to speak and read Middle English and to establish some of the principles of medieval storytelling that can be used for interpreting other stories. The remainder of the course will consist of discussions of the stories in the Tales . There will be a mid-term exam and comprehensive final, a number of informal interpretive exercises, and two papers.