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The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales. Geoffrey Chaucer . Why do we study Chaucer & The Tales?. Why not just learn to write? Isn’t that what we’ll be doing in college? Aren’t skills more important than ideas and creativity anyway?

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The Canterbury Tales

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  1. The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer

  2. Why do we study Chaucer & The Tales? • Why not just learn to write? Isn’t that what we’ll be doing in college? Aren’t skills more important than ideas and creativity anyway? 1. Just because something was written in the past doesn’t make it less worthy of being read or studied. In fact… 2. In studying Chaucer, we experience the world through other people’s eyes and learn how we came to be who we are. 3. Why do we talk to our grandparents about what it was like when they were young? Because it relates to YOU. 4. We read Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Macbeth, because that is who we are. Common threads = common mistakes = their story is our story = and it is a GREAT story.

  3. YOUR LIFE • Who you are and what you do in your life is determined in part by what people did hundreds even thousands of years ago. • Choices they made – or had made for them • People they married…killed…bore… • Religions they chose – or had chosen for them • Where they lived and what they did for a living • What happened to them – war…injustice…nothing at all • We can’t talk to your great, great, great, great+ grandmother, but we can read the stories of what life was like for her. • YOU ARE THE RESULT – how can you not be interested in what they had to say?

  4. The Frame Story • A story within a story – the tales are about 29 pilgrims journeying to Canterbury to visit St. Thomas à Becket’s shrine. • The Host of the Tabard Inn in Southwark, where they meet, decides to go with them and suggests a contest. • Each pilgrim must tell 2 tales – one on the way and one on the return trip (WINNER = free dinner at the Tabard at others’ cost) • Narrator = a poet named - Geoffrey Chaucer – NOT to be confused with the author by the same name.

  5. I liked the Decameron – I think I’ll write my OWN frame story – even better! The plague was terrible – I should know – I was there - but the rich sometimes escaped death. Where did they go and how did they spend their time? Hm…Hide in a villa and tell stories? Yes, they did. Inspiration Strikes! Chaucer (1342-1400) The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400) Middle English – vernacular - ordinary “sondry folk” Boccaccio (1313-1375) Decameron (1350-1351/3) Italian - nobles

  6. TheBlack Death It was bad • Three forms: 1. bubonic (1 wk. 80%) – swelling buboes 2. pneumonic (1-2 dys. 95%) – respiratory 3. septicemic (1 dy. 99.9%) – blood system • Between 75-200 million people died in Middle Ages • According to medieval historian Philip Daileader in 2007: The trend of recent research [points] to a figure more like 45-50% dead in Europe during a 4-yr. period. There is a fair amount of geographic variation. In Mediterranean Europe, areas such as Italy, the south of France and Spain, where plague ran for about four years consecutively, it was probably closer to 75 percent to 80 percent of the population. In Germany and England ... it was probably closer to 20 percent.

  7. Silver Lining- no really – I’m serious. • Massive overpopulation • Famine • Poor sanitation • Helped foster and spread the plague • Disease • Predators • Starvation • Mother Nature’s means of population control Results? End of feudalism Emergence of capitalism Rise of middle class We are NOT peasants anymore! Woo hoo!

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