Pro-seminar: The Language of Chaucer and his Contemporaries
A BA seminar, aimed at second or third year students wishing to broaden their knowledge of
the historical development of the English language and its literary traditions.
Geoffrey Chaucer is often considered to be the ‘Father of English Literature’: his
poetry is extraordinary not only for its range and skill but also for its creative use of the
English vernacular in building literary monuments to rival those of Latin, French and Italian.
Chaucer is thus also an important ‘Father’ of the English language. But he was not the only
figure in fourteenth-century England to be experimenting with the vernacular: John Gower
was a potential rival to Chaucer’s reputation, and William Langland’s Piers Plowman was
very widely read even in Tudor England. Their English dialects were different from that of
Chaucer, but their place in the development of English as a literary language at least is far
from insignificant.
This course will consider samples of the writing of Chaucer, Langland and Gower
alongside samples from other ‘minor’ contemporaries to explore the development of Middle
English as a language for the creation of literature.
Learning outcomes:
 Knowledge of basic grammar of Middle English language
 Basic training in reading Middle English
 Consideration of theories of translation
 Broad appreciation of the development of written English in manuscript and the
beginning of print
 Understanding of post-Conquest English literature and culture
 Appreciation of importance of the medieval world in the modern English
imagination, and sense of ‘Englishness’
Syllabus
Week 1 – Introduction to Middle English language, with brief explanation of its development
from Old English, the origins of different dialects etc.
Text discussed in class: an extract from Chaucer, The Miller’s Tale
Week 2 – Middle English Orthography. Comparison of passage of The Wife of Bath’s Tale in
Hengwrt and Ellesmere MSS. Samuels’ Types of incipient standard
Weeks 3-4 – Sir Orfeo, from the Auchinleck MS – an example of Type II. An example of
influence of Breton lai; Arthurian lit; fusion of classical and Celtic elements
Weeks 5-7– Chaucer, The Franklin’s Tale. Chaucer’s Celtic romance.
Week 8 – Extracts from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, romance in a Northern dialect
Week 9 – Extracts from Gower’s Confession Amantis: romance in the Kentish dialect
Week 10 – Chaucer, The Parson’s Tale – the language of the preacher
Week 11 – Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Tale – parodying the preacher
Weeks 12-13 – extracts from Langland, Piers Plowman, religion and mysticism in Shropshire
Week 14 – exam, featuring passages for paraphrase and comment, with literary and linguistic
questions
Bibliography
For Chaucer, the standard edition is The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Houghton
Mifflin, 1987, subsequent editions OUP).
For Sir Orfeo, see Middle English Verse Romances, ed. Donald B. Sands (Exeter UP, 1986)
and the online edition at http://auchinleck.nls.uk/mss/orfeo.html
Extracts for other texts will be provided.
There will not be much required secondary reading, since the aim of the course is to get
students reading Middle English comfortably, but a useful introduction to the language is:
Simon Horobin and Jeremy Smith, An Introduction to Middle English (Edinburgh, 2002)