ENG 393 - Chaucer and the English Language (4)

A study of Chaucer’s work, its milieu, and of pre-modern English. By reading the complete Canterbury Tales in Middle English and by class study of pre-modern English, the student gains substantial familiarity with the history of the language as well as the world-view of an ancestral though different culture. Special emphasis is given to the classical heritage through the reading of Robert P. Miller’s Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds and to the history of English through W. Nelson Francis’ The History of English and Knapp and Snortum, The Sounds of Chaucer’s English.

Offered spring term.