to the class notes on reading The Canterbury Tales in context

so this week I'll go over

some specific context that I hope will help people

as they navigate through the sections of the Canterbury Tales that we're reading

and then from there I'll say just a few words about how to think about

the reading from this week and the reading for every week for the course

in terms of some larger contexts of what the course is trying to accomplish

So I'm going to go ahead and get started.

There are some special challenges with reading The Canterbury Tales

you'll see here in the notes that I've abbreviated that to TCT

just for simplicity sake and one thing that I've tried to do here

is bold any key

literary terms, especially the kind of thing that might come up again in a

midterm or

on final exam. So with that said

one thing that I recommend to everyone is

that you should all spend extra time reading marginal definitions and

footnotes

This is something that I went over in last week's class notes but this

week in particular and I think really for the next few weeks

we'll see this come up with Othello

when we read Shakespeare for example. But this week in particular

I think

present a lot of challenges and really makes for some very slow reading

It takes me a long time to read through the Canterbury Tales

just with trying to read through the marginal definitions, the footnotes,

trying to figure what's happening line-by-line, stanza-by-stanza

There's kind of a lot to process there and so you're really going to want to

give yourself time to do that.

The text is just loaded with both kinds of information

marginal definitions footnotes, and so you should find

a system that works for you so for instance when I read something like

like the Canterbury Tales I just get used to looking in the right hand margin

at the end of every line

watching for in reading footnotes as I encounter them. I really actually find

myself really great differently than I do.

Even for last week, for Beowulf, that had some of

this but not really nearly

as much. I would I would sort of glance ahead at times to see,

"Oh great, I've got five lines coming up with no

marginal definitions and no footnotes," and I knew I could just read through that

and try to make sense of it on my own.

It takes a little getting used to because when you we look at that stuff

especially the footnotes where your eye

has to move down the whole page, it can can pull you out of

the flow of making sense of the reading itself

so it takes with me a little while and I except it takes everyone a little while

just to get used to that and moving back and forth.

If you find a better system works for you then go for it.

You know there are sometimes when I'll just say you know what I'll only look at

that material if

I'm really confused and I won't look at all of it or

I might stop at the end of every sentence or every stanza and look back over the

material to help me out.

So find a system that works for you, that helps you

kind of read, get into some kind of reading flow also

while also understanding what you're reading. Another thing that you should focus on doing,

just like last week but here even more so perhaps

last week would be with Beowulf we had a modern translation so we didn't really have to

deal with

in that case it would have been Old English and all the strange nuances of spelling and

and vocabulary that that we would have encountered

had we read the Old English version. Here we are reading

a translated version in the sense that

some of the spelling's been modernized there are there have been some editorial

changes made

but it's much closer to Middle English

than it is to modern English and so there's a lot of weird spelling in there.

So when I would recommend doing is reading out loud,

sounding out words your head perhaps

help you become accustomed to the unusual spelling of Middle English.

in pages 19-25 of our textbook

there's some help with this where the editors basically explain

how in Middle English different

letter combinations actually are

make different sounds than what we're used to as modern readers. I don't find

that very useful

because I just can't remember that

what you know I look at the material but it's hard for me to keep in

mind while I'm actually looking at

the primary text. I just kind of make my way through and try sound it out on my own and

oftentimes by saying it out loud

even if the spelling is different than what we're accustomed to, if you say

it out loud

you can kind of hear the modern word

in the Middle English word and you can get to the right place. An example here

is just the first four lines of the poem

So what I have underneath that is a translation that includes

any of the definitions of words that were given in the marginal notes or the footnotes.

I changed those around and I just modernized the spelling even more

so the translation I came up with was

This is still a word-by-word rendering, and when you first encounter it,

it still is going to take a little bit to ask, okay, what's actually being

described here

because the sentence structure is very strange. It's not a straightforward

sentence

and we're going to encounter that a lot the Canterbury Tales

so if I were to take this to a next level translation, like try to put it into

just simple straightforward English, I might

translate this as something like

"When April brings its fresh showers,

to freshen the roots that have been dried out

from the drought of March and the plants have sucked up all of this rain,

that's what gives flowers their life and energy."

That's a little awkwardly done because I

did it line-by-line, but

the sense there is that these flowers are sucking in

the rain that's falling in April, so the most important thing here really is the idea

that, hey,

it's spring, and flowers are blooming. That's what's being said there.

But you need to kind of work through all those different levels of understanding

and you know when I'm reading I'm not doing what I'm talking out loud right now

I'm not doing this in full detail. A lot of it's happening

just in my head as I'm reading along. As I'm reading I'm thinking about what's

going on, I'm trying to,

I'm reading out loud. I'm making sure I just understand the basic gist of what's going

on

and then in my head, I'm trying to make sense, and say, okay, it must be spring time because these

these are the months,

this is what's being described.

In addition to just contending with the spelling issues and the sentence structure

at the end of every stanza clarify for yourself what was the point

of that stanza, what happened in it or what was described

Remember that you can identify stanza breaks

anytime that there is an indented line which indicates the start of a new

stanza

much like the start of a new paragraph in prose writing. Note that some poetry will

sometimes use a line break or gap between lines

to indicate a stanza break

Now that ends that stanza

previously for many lines, I just took the last few lines out of it

then you can see the indent right there

here's our indent, that means we're onto a new stanza

often a stanza break indicates a shift in subject a shift in focus

a shift in tone perhaps but nonetheless

and then it goes on from there. I just wan to be clear that's

what we're referring to.

Stanzas can be anything from a line to

many many lines, dozens, hundreds, depending on the poem or the poet.

In The Canterbury Tales a lot of stanzas tend to be

I guess

anywhere between 15 and 30-40 lines, something like that

Some of them get a little bit long, but they are being used intentionally.

Like in the prologue a lot of times

each stanza focuses on one character for instance

so what's nice is that those stanza breaks give you a visual cue to pause,

ask yourself, okay, what just happened in that previous stanza.

The remainder of what I have in these notes

are intended to help you read Canterbury Tales within the context of the time

period

and of other course content. When it comes to reading the general prologue, basically I

assigned the general prologue

and then The Miller's Tale. For the general prologue

keep in mind the basic frame narrative is very simple

a range of characters across all social classes in occupations

are journeying on a pilgrimage to a holy site

so a frame narrative is a story

that serves as the mean narrated in which other stories are embedded were

told

so here in but Canterbury Tales

for instance the premarital is the story of the travelers

core meeting at the beginning in going to Canterbury so that come with the

means to ru

in the stories we tell each other as the trouble

are situated in or embedded in a larger free merited

says they are telling them as the trial but the story to journey with the means

through

so free to bring art it is like that you think about as a framework agreement

photograph her need it frames the other stories

so the story I'm the freemen air tonight is

but introduced in the general prologue begins adding in

were all the characters are staying with a host who decides that the most all

cover stories the past I murder

so in the same way now and we going along Karcher

we play games right listen to music it wasn't in

the radio you know we might tell each other stories to read it aloud to each

other whenever

whatever we're doing to pass the time though says he must pass the time a

current stories

and this is a quote from rate from the general prologue

no sense that Egypt you too short with our way

in this biatch Chuck telling tales 20

to can cover

in its own homework you should tell another two ventures

that will with them all in other words he saying hey

on the way there everyone tales to tales

on the way back to camp from Canterbury to London everyone tells

two more tales two towns to more details

that one twister again so was the hosts idea

it will be the competition was Utah's best story up the host

that accompanies them on the pilgrimage to King to look for long is intended as

an introduction

to all the characters it is meant to be humorous

so I'm hoping that is you reading your point some parts are and ensuring funny

somehow sort of me laugh out loud funny sometimes more

arm ironical satirical com

but but is often at the expense in pointing out some kind of hypocrisy

involving the character in the typing ewbal Road society that they represent

sees you to water the characters their is I'm

sort through things going on where we're being given the sort portrait Beach

character

arm in miniature giving wanted details about them

but at the same time so for those details on some things the character

does

seem to be at odds with who they're supposed to be

or third job in and that's intentional so so pay special attention to what's

happening

i sry the introduction to the following questions

were kinda details but various characters to strasser a

regular attention to you you know one thing that's very obvious he talks a lot

about what people are wearing

so notice that ask yourself why is he paying too much attention that's why

does it matter so much

what close the app what concludes the havoc and jackets with materials

y si Q its how does each of his descriptions and two years into the

character

and how he wants is to you hammer so it's going to the big over-arching

question what you're asking

as you read the general really get to know them

the miller's tale

on again enters the plugs actually

pretty basic got three men John Nicholson Absalon