Tag: Chaucer
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June 12, 2020 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Geoffrey Chaucer lived during a very tumultuous time in England. Chaucer’s patron was John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, a prince and statesman. Gaunt was the third son of Edward III, which enabled his rise to fame and fortune. Additionally, when Richard II, …
October 4, 2019 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. In a 2014 interview with David Letterman, Jerry Seinfeld says that he was inspired to create Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee to play with a new format, something that could be viewed on a phone. This occurred to him at a time when …
September 14, 2018 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Shakespeare is a favorite topic of mine, and of many of our students. Recently, I read and discussed Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. Though we didn’t have time to compare it to Chaucer’s poem Troilus and Criseyde, I wanted to spend a few moments …
July 13, 2018 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. I am interested in the way(s) in which literary language intersects with language itself. By literary language, I mean language that most often occurs in writing, but not necessarily in everyday speech. A marked difference between the spoken and written word of a …
May 4, 2018 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Last week’s Quarterly Discussion focused on Chaucer in translation. I opened the discussion with the question as to how one would determine what elements make a “best” translation. This seemingly generic question is actually really difficult to answer. Some authors excelled at rhyme …
March 30, 2018 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. In April, we will be discussing two of my favorite things in the Quarterly Discussion: translation and Chaucer. I love Middle English texts because they show such difference between Old English and contemporary English. Old English was originally spoken by Germanic tribes such …
March 16, 2018 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. In a global society, we are bound to read many works in translation. Quality literature from around the world is being produced at an increasingly fast pace. In fact, it is impossible to keep up with the literature in one’s primary language, let …
January 12, 2018 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post: from Chaucer to Chappelle “Let fancy fly, with all her lofty graces,/ Pack wisdom in, with tenderness and passion,/ But never put good fooling out of fashion.” – Goethe Chaucer’s wit still resonates today. In The Canterbury Tales he developed characters that might …
December 15, 2017 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Also, thanks to HMU Tutor Dominique Wagner for a wonderful discussion which resulted in some of the questions posed in today’s blog. “There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so …
April 1, 2016 “April is the cruellest month” – T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. I hardly think that T.S. Eliot had Chaucer in mind when he wrote those lines. However, Chaucer does begin the pilgrimage in The Canterbury Tales in April, and most of the tales …
