In this course, I will guide you through a reading of The Canterbury Tales: the unfinished masterpiece of Geoffrey Chaucer, the most respected and widely read English poet of the middle ages. In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer takes a journey with a group of pilgrims, each of whom tells a story on the road. This frame narrative allows Chaucer to tell a wide range of short stories in different voices and genres, and match each story to its teller.

The Canterbury Tales Course is divided into two parts, and you can take one or both, in either order. This course is Part Two and is focused on the more overlooked Canterbury Tales. If you’ve read some of the Canterbury Tales but not all, we’ll probably be reading the tales you’ve never read before in this course. Overlooked doesn’t mean these aren’t good tales though, and “overlooked” doesn’t mean nobody has read them. They’re just the tales that don’t usually make it onto the short-list when people read some of the Canterbury Tales and not all.

This course includes:
The General Prologue
The Man of Law's Tale
The Clerk's Tale
The Merchant's Tale
The Physician's Tale
The Shipman's Tale
The Tale of Melibee
The Monk's Tale
The Second Nun's Tale
The Canon's Yeoman's Tale
The Manciple's Tale
The Parson's Tale
Chaucer's Retraction

This course is open for pre-registration only. We will likely start in March or April, but that starting date is not yet confirmed.