Canterbury Tales

Catalog description

This course will investigate the medieval phenomenon of pilgrimage—or religious vacationing—by way of a reading of one of the classics of English literature, Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th c. masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales. In addition to the motif of devotional journeying, we will study the different medieval social classes (knights, clerics, and peasants) and story types (chivalric romances, fabliaux or bawdy tales, saints lives) that Chaucer explores in his literary masterwork.