Medieval French in the Modern French Classroom

The French language sequence at Berkeley stresses the importance of exposing students to a wide range of authentic texts and emphasizes cross-cultural understanding. Despite the rich cultural and literary heritage of the medieval and early modern periods in France, this exposure is limited to modern French. What are some of the objections to and difficulties in presenting medieval French to learners of modern French, and what strategies might be effective? In this paper I make a case for including earlier forms of language in the L2 classroom and present two different approaches, one music-based and one text-based, and discuss my experience designing and piloting lesson plans this semester.