{"content":[{"text":"1. Introduction \n The material in this chapter owes much to the helpful cooperation of Chaucer teachers in \n various UK institutions. It does not claim to be definitive nor even completed, but it aims \n to give a snapshot of the present situation and it is open to continual reworking and \n exploration of the issues it raises. Readers are invited to contribute their comments, \n observations and experiences in teaching Chaucer to the author, so that the material and \n opinions given here can be updated and refined. \n This report is based on returns and web-research showing that 63 departments of \n English teach Chaucer. It includes anonymised quotations from responses to \n questionnaires and material derived from current web sites. Where material is in the \n public domain (websites, prospectuses) it is attributed. It is restricted to BA courses, \n although there is also evidence of lively developments at MA level. \n The English Subject Centre (ESC) has been generous with advice and material \n from their report on the HE English Curriculum. The organisational principles governing \n this web site should be apparent to Chaucerians: a collection of voices, thematically \n linked but not necessarily in agreement, overseen by an unreliable narrator. It is to be \n hoped that this will result in a lively and ongoing conversation on matters of concern to \n us all.","bbox":{"left":0.147058,"top":0.088894,"width":0.6997329999999999,"height":0.316422}},{"text":"a: Where are we now?","bbox":{"left":0.147059,"top":0.419953,"width":0.17515600000000003,"height":0.02021400000000001}},{"text":"It is difficult to imagine a time when more people have read Chaucer [or Langland or \n Gower]…there are more copies of the work of Chaucer in existence than there have ever \n been, and there are more readers of Chaucer than there have ever been, back to and \n including the poet’s own time. There are more students in universities than there were \n just a few decades ago; in English-speaking countries there are more students as a \n proportion of the whole population … and there are more universities. But Chaucer is \n available outside the universities too, in a greater number of volumes than ever before, at \n a relatively low price…Put simply, more people are reading more Middle English than \n ever before. If this is marginalization, then we are going to have to work with it. \n (David Matthews, The Making of Middle English, 1765-1910 (Minneapolis: \n University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 194.","bbox":{"left":0.147059,"top":0.456424,"width":0.7035259999999999,"height":0.192757}},{"text":"Recent events in the public domain keep Chaucer in the public consciousness as \n an essential figure in English literature – e.g. the recent Canterbury Tales series on BBC \n tv, Ian McEwan citing Chaucer as his ‘man of the millenium’, and creative responses \n such as Peter Ackroyd’s Clerkenwell Tales (2003). Chaucer, like Shakespeare, is one of \n the authors about whom the general public expect English graduates to be \n knowledgeable. The challenge to Chaucer teachers is to build on and use these \n perceptions and expectations while avoiding the trap of ‘heritage’ Chaucer. And a survey \n of the present situation indicates that this is a challenge they are meeting. \n Recent changes in higher education have had an immediate bearing on \n pedagogical practice, assessment, course content, and design. \n It seems clear that many of the problems and challenges confronting teachers of Chaucer \n are not peculiar to Chaucer or even medieval literature more generally, even if they \n present themselves more pressingly at the moment to teachers of early literature.","bbox":{"left":0.147059,"top":0.663817,"width":0.701419,"height":0.229302}},{"text":"2","bbox":{"left":0.495098,"top":0.935182,"width":0.00980399999999998,"height":0.020212000000000008}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}