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This handbook was produced with the aim of providing students with an introduction to Old Irish literature as well as to the language. One of the notable Old Irish stories is used as the basic text. Examples of poems, and of the glosses, supplement it. All are thoroughly annotated. The grammatical information provided in these annotations is summarized in grammatical sections dealing with specific constructions and forms. The first fifty of these sections are descriptive; many of the same matters are discussed in the second fifty section from a historical point of view. A final glossary includes references to all words occurring in the texts. The apparatus was accordingly designed to permit a relatively easy approach to a very difficult language.
Accompanying lessons, readings, and songs available online for free.
An Introduction to Old Occitan is the only textbook in print for learning the language used by the troubadours in southern France during the Middle Ages. Each of the thirty-two chapters discusses a subject in the study of the language (e.g., stressed vowels, subjunctive mood) and includes an exercise based on a reading of an Occitan text that has been edited afresh for this volume. An essential glossary analyzes every occurrence of every word in the readings and gives cognates in other Romance languages as well as the source of each word in Latin or other languages. The book also contains a list of prefixes, infixes, and suffixes and a dictionary of proper names.
This handbook was written specifically for beginning students. It presents twenty-seven graded readings, each accompanied by a vocabulary and an explanation of grammatical details; the final chapter provides a sample of the Codex Argenteus. Among the readings, the first seven are in effect preliminary exercises. The remaining twenty readings represent the Gothic Bible and the Skeireins. The external history of the language is also outlined, as well as the elements of phonetics, and the essentials of phonologic and analogic change.
In Approaches to Teaching the Arthurian Tradition, instructors who have taught Arthurian material in contexts from high school to graduate school draw on their experience to address a range of challenges: Where does one begin a course that embraces the most important continuous tradition of British literary history? Which works from which periods and countries should one include? What kinds of background sources in mythology and Celtic tradition are most helpful? What is the place of history, art, music, or film in such a course?
This volume, like others in the Approaches series, is divided into two parts. “Materials” surveys editions of medieval and modern texts and anthologies and highlights reference works, supplemental readings, and aids to teaching. “Approaches” contains twenty-five essays on teaching Arthuriana. Topics include background studies, interdisciplinary courses, major authors (e.g., Chrètien de Troyes, Gottfried, Wolfram, Malory, and Tennyson), and specific pedagogical approaches such as teaching the Arthurian tradition through film, popular culture, and archaeology.
During recent decades, the study of Beowulf has flourished in liberal arts colleges, community colleges, and high schools. Useful for new instructors as well as medieval scholars, this collection of twenty-eight essays suggests ways to teach the poem to undergraduate, graduate, and mixed classes, in Old English or in translation.
Like other books in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, Approaches to Teaching Beowulf is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” reviews the many editions and translations of Beowulf and evaluates reference works, aids to teaching, critical studies, and facsimiles. The second, “Approaches,” begins with a survey of how and to whom Beowulf is taught, followed by four sections of essays on teaching the poem at specific levels of instruction. The last two sections of essays offer ideas for presenting the background of the poem (history, religion, oral tradition) and for using special approaches, such as discussing the role of women in the poem and teaching Beowulf as performance.
“What separates the Decameron from most of the canon is that it is fun to read,” says the editor in his preface to this volume. “Though its narrators sometimes weep, they laugh much more often.” Boccaccio’s highly teachable work is easily excerpted, and the essays in this collection describe stimulating ways to introduce these tales to undergraduates.
The inaugural volume in the MLA’s popular Approaches to Teaching World Literature series comprises bibliographic and instructional essays devoted to the first great English poet. The consultant editor, Florence H. Ridley, notes in her introduction, “As teachers we are faced with the challenge of enabling our students to see how Chaucer’s poetry passes the ultimate test of the world’s greatest literature.” The pieces collected here address the special difficulties of introducing students to Chaucer’s language and his political, social, and intellectual milieu.
Like other books in the Approaches series, this volume is divided into two parts. Part 1, “Materials,” surveys editions, anthologies, recommended student readings, recordings, films, and other instructional aids. In part 2, “Approaches,” fifteen teachers discuss how to present Chaucer in settings ranging from survey courses for nonmajors to seminars devoted to the author. Readers will find within a variety of useful information, including discussions of Chaucer’s cultural context, the representation of women in medieval literature, and the theme of pilgrimage in fourteenth-century poetry.
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales was the subject of the first volume in the Approaches to Teaching series, published in 1980. But in the past thirty years, Chaucer scholarship has evolved dramatically, teaching styles have changed, and new technologies have created extraordinary opportunities for studying Chaucer. This second edition of Approaches to Teaching Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales reflects the wide variety of contexts in which students encounter the poem and the diversity of perspectives and methods instructors bring to it. Perennial topics such as class, medieval marriage, genre, and tale order rub shoulders with considerations of violence, postcoloniality, masculinities, race, and food in the tales.
The first section, “Materials,” reviews available editions, scholarship, and audiovisual and electronic resources for studying The Canterbury Tales. In the second section, “Approaches,” thirty-six essays discuss strategies for teaching Chaucer’s language, for introducing theory in the classroom, for focusing on individual tales, and for using digital resources in the classroom. The multiplicity of approaches reflects the richness of Chaucer’s work and the continuing excitement of each new generation’s encounter with it.
This Approaches to Teaching volume aims to provide students with a vision of Chaucer that highlights the great variety, breadth, and depth of his entire body of work. Although Chaucerians recognize that Troilus and Criseyde and the shorter poems are as entertaining and complex as the more familiar Canterbury Tales, teachers of medieval English do not readily include these texts in their courses. The materials collected here offer instructors ideas and strategies for making Chaucer’s lesser-taught works as memorable and engrossing for students as any of the narrative gems in Canterbury Tales.
Part 1, “Materials,” discusses available teaching resources, focusing not only on the many editions of Chaucer’s works in Middle English but also on translations for teachers whose students turn to modern English as a study aid.
The essays in part 2, “Approaches,” begin by exploring the poetry’s backgrounds, including sources and genre; the growth of the English vernacular as a literary language; Chaucer’s conception of history in its Christian, classical, and English political senses; the role of manuscript study in illuminating the historical record; and Chaucer’s representation of gender. The section on teaching the poems features essays that offer suggestions for overcoming students’ difficulties with Middle English, consider the relation between Chaucer and his readers, assess various theoretical models, and show how a wide range of visual imagery can be used in the classroom. A final section on course contexts includes essays on teaching these poems for the first time, as well as designing classes for nonmajors and graduate students. The volume concludes with an appendix on reading Chaucer aloud with students.
Dante’s Divine Comedy can compel and shock readers: it combines intense emotion and psychological insight with medieval theology and philosophy. This volume will help instructors lead their students through the many dimensions—historical, literary, religious, and ethical—that make the work so rewarding and enduringly relevant yet so difficult.
Part 1, “Materials,” gives instructors an overview of the important scholarship on the Divine Comedy. The essays of part 2, “Approaches,” describe ways to teach the work in the light of its contemporary culture and ours. Various teaching situations (a first-year seminar, a creative writing class, high school, a prison) are considered, and the many available translations are discussed.
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