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| 02/04 - 05/24 | ||||||
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6:00 pm |
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Subject: English (Grad) (GENG)
CRN: 21951
Lecture
St Paul: O'Shaughnessy Education Center 212
Requirements Met:
Global Literature
Pre-1830 British Lit.
In what forms do Chaucer and the Middle Ages persist in the modern cultural landscape? This question will guide this seminar, which explores the global reception history of Geoffrey Chaucer from his earliest English and French contemporaries to modern-day popular culture and digital media. Focusing on Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the seminar will “code-switch” between medieval and postmedieval frames of reference. First, we will read The Canterbury tales by Chaucer; second, we will consider how Chaucerian works are repurposed in modern media (such as spoken word poetry, visual art, film, dialect literature, YouTube videos, and comic books). As this course toggles between modes of reading, it tests the boundaries between literary criticism and popular reception history. It also asks how present-day translation theory confronts a perceived chasm separating static text-based models of “translation” from embodied culture-based models of “adaptation.” Thus, beyond studying Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the seminar will (1) examine the online Global Chaucers project that logs and links translations and adaptations across the world; (2) explore the work of British-Nigerian poet, performer and rapper, Patience Agbabi, who revisits The Canterbury Tales and mines the Middle-English text to offer a 21st-century take on the characters, its poetry and its performance elements; and (3) wrestle with the six-part BBC Canterbury Tales adaptations of specific Canterbury Tales which are transferred to a modern, 21st-century setting, but still set along the traditional Pilgrims' route to Canterbury. This course satisfies the 600-level requirement and the pre-1900 British Literature requirement. This course also satisfies the Literature in a Global, Transatlantic, or Transnational Perspective for the new curriculum. GENG 513 or permission of the instructor is required.
3 Credits