HENK03618U Engelsk - Frit emne: Geoffrey Chaucer and the Politics of English as a minority language

Chaucer may look difficult to read but this is an unfortunate impression that ought not to survive a few minutes' careful attention to the words read aloud. We will in this course look at Chaucer as the creator of modern English as a literary or written language; in this respect -- salvaging the rubble of English from under the officially superimposed layers of French and Latin -- Chaucer can be understood within a postcolonial context. In the Canterbury Tales we will look at the  invention of England as a literary space, and of English as a language that can represent both the sublime and the bawdy. Chaucer is unquestionably the most enjoyably obscene of all English writers, as we shall see in the Miller's Tale and the Reeve's Tale. Bawdiness tends to be part of the local scene; sublime effects are usually placed overseas, as in the Knight's Tale and the Franklin's Tale, both of great importance for our sense of medieval chivalry and courtly love, as well as for understanding how a new 'vernacular' literature could negotiate its position with regard to the languages and myths of the Classical world