Reading Middle English out loud with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

This one day course will cover the basics of Chaucer's Middle English, in particular, skills required for reading out loud. Participants will learn the basics of pronunciation and will engage in a number of workshops practising the skill of reading Chaucer aloud in the original Middle English. The primary text for the day will be The Canterbury Tales and in particular 'The Prologue'.

No prior knowledge of Middle English will be required but in preparation for the course participants might read extracts from the Prologue to The Canterbury Talesin translation and have a passing familiarity with some of the other stories and characters. If participants wish to have a copy of the Middle English texts with associated commentaries to refer to, the Norton Critical Edition of The Canterbury Tales(ISBN 0393925870) might be helpful. Alternatively, Oxford University Press The Riverside Chaucer (ISBN 9780192821096) is a standard edition which contains all of Chaucer’s works.