Proseminar: Middle English Literature: Geoffrey Chaucer
Fr. 14.00-16.00
Geb. 23.21 Raum 02.53 Beginn: 25.04.2003
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The aims of this seminar are simple and practical: to help you understand Chaucer in the original language, and to help you form a critical judgement of your own as to what his poetry is about and how it works.
We start from the scratch. I assume no prior knowledge of Chaucer, his language, the subjects he wrote in. You are shown how to read a few lines and taken on to the point where you should be able to build up a critical sense of the meaning and the shape of a whole poem.
At the same time you are shown how to use literary and historical `background' material so that it really works as part of a full and informed analysis.
The seminar will not solve every problem in detail, but it will show you how to solve the most common ones.
(adapted from: Rob Pope. How to Study Chaucer. London 1988:1.)
From the quotation above one can infer the plan of the seminar which closely corresponds to the contents of Rob Pope's introductory book:
Unit 1 Getting started (2 lessons)
Unit 2 The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (3 lessons)
Unit 3 The Knight's Tale (2 lessons)
Unit 4 Other tales from The Canterbury Tales (3 lessons)
Unit 5 Other works by Geoffrey Chaucer (4 lessons)
Unit 6 Achievement test (1 lesson)
As can be seen from the plan above, this seminar affords a great amount of planning and organization in the first unit at 25 Apr 2003. Therefore it is absolutely necessary to attend this introductory lesson. The seminar will be closed then. Students who miss this first lesson cannot attend the course.
You can put your name down on the list of participants by contacting
holteir@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de
Moreover, all students will be invited to the BSCW-Server.
bscw.uni-duesseldorf.de
We will use the following books:
Rob Pope. How to Study Chaucer. London 1988.
Any edition of Geoffrey Chaucer's works, the standard edition is:
Larry D. Benson (Ed.). The Riverside Chaucer. Oxford 1988.
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Voraussetzungen: Introduction to English Medieval Studies -
Part I: General und Part II: Middle English
Leistungsnachweis: Referat und mündliche Prüfung oder Hausarbeit
Veranstaltungstyp: Wahlpflicht M.A./Prom.; SII: B1, 2.
Der Inhalt der Lehrveranstaltung ist geeignet für die Zwischenprüfung
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© Rainer Holtei
last updated
20.09.2009
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