What are you reading?

[Diamond Duchess]

Originally Posted by jekylljuice

That would include me. I covered them a couple of years ago as part of a module I was doing on High Medieval Literature (which is far from my favourite literary period). Out of interest, Diamond Duchess, are you actually reading them in their original Middle English form or just in their Modern English translations? I had to read them in the former, which isn't quite as bad as it sounds. The thing about Middle English is that it looks rather terrifying on the page, but if you read it out loud you'll find that phonetically it's very similar.

Sadly, I don't actually remember that much about the texts themselves, other than that the Wife of Bath was quite the character. Most of what I'd stored had to go to make way for deliberations upon William Langland's Piers Plowman, which I had to write a 3,000 word essay upon at the end of the module. Just be thankful you're not studying that happy little epic - infuriatingly mind-bending or mind-bendingly infuriating? My cerebral jury's still out on that one.

To answer your question, jekylljuice, I'm reading the tales in their Modern English translations. You're right: Middle English isn't too far from Modern English, but it looks weird and the vowels are used differently.

I wanted to mention the Middle English because my English teacher made note of it and read the introduction to our class in the original Middle English.