In this course, we will read about half 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:
TheGeneral 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

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a quintessential gothic novel, a foundational text in the history of science fiction, and a gripping monster story. It is beautiful, horrible, and philosophically engaging, has been continually in print since 1823, and has inspired countless imitations and adaptations. Find out what the fuss is about with me. Whether you’re reading Frankenstein for the first time or the tenth, this fascinating text is worth a closer look.

Nū scylun hergan     hefaenrīcaes Uard,
metudæs maecti     end his mōdgidanc,

So begins a short poem traditionally titled Cædmon's Hymn, the oldest poem by a named poet in the English language. How did English go from that to these lines, that open Electric Slide Is Not A Dance, a 2019 poem by Porsha Olayiwola?

I wanna privy you to a little secret. Come close now. Good. So, what you need to know is the electric slide is not a dance. It's a transmission code.

In this eight-week course we will begin with now and look backward, tracing a path from modern English to its early roots.