Week One: Your Position in the Mediascape

In Monday's first class in Literature and Media Studies we will discuss the oral tradition and the practice of the storyteller. We will also consider the patterns of paradigm shift in the media environment by reading and discussing one of the important early examples of English LIterature.

Before coming to class I am asking you to read The Wife of Bath's Prologue and The Wife of Bath's Tale from the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer's story is written in what we now call "Middle English" which is a version of the English spoken during the Middle Ages (from roughly 1150-1470. It differs from contemporary English enough to be difficult to read without an expert knowledge of the dialect.  You can try the original here, 
http://www.librarius.com/canttran/wftltrfs.htm
where you will find both the prologue and tale in Middle English.
Here is a link to probably the best way to read the text, which is an interlinear translation which means each line of the orginal text is followed by a modern translation. Here is a link to that version of the the text,
https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/wbt-par.htm#PROLOGUE

If you must, you can read the summary of the Prologue and Tale here, at the Cliff's Notes site, where there is a good condensed background on the Canterbury Tales and Chaucer as well as a plain language summary of the works.

You can have the prologue and tale read to you on youtube. Here is a link to those pages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du1ryviObsU for the tale and the prologue is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj7VmvkgCBs  There are several possible audio versions to choose from. 

In class we will review the basic policies of the class and the attendance and grading policies. Attendance will be taken each week and reported electronically.

Students can expect to read something and write something each week in the form of weekly assignments. Please bring your laptop or tablet to every class. Many weeks you can expect to read and write in-class.

All the writing done for this class must be mounted on a blog the student maintains for the semester. Blogger is the preferred choice as a blogging environment but you can use others if you insist. Please leave the privacy settings off and remember anyone can read comments you make in your blog. Please start a new blog for this course and don't use an old blog you have already created as to avoid possible confusion. Once you have created a blog please email me the url for your blog, indicating that you are in the Literature and Media Studies class.

Please read the Chaucer selection before you come to class on Monday morning I will see you then.


We wiwork on understanding positions in the mediascape and methods of defining our own lineage and outlooks. We are what we behold as much as we are what we eat. We will begin the class with a discussion of High and Low and a review of the course syllabus.

Seven Lively Arts by Gilbert Seldes

Next class we will be reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice or alternatively another work from the Austen storyverse. After reading the novel or the alternative, students will write a blog post discussing why the work does or does not have relevance to relationships today.

Remember next week is the Martin Luther King holiday and there will be no class. You will have two weeks, then to read Pride and Prejudice.