Chaucer Today

Lesson Plan

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Teaching “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”

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Objectives:

1. Students will be able to identify the position of women in the Middle Ages.
2. Students will be able to analyze and close-read “The Wife of Bath.”
3. Students will be able to apply modern analysis to The Canterbury Tales.

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Time Required: ~ 3-7 days

Literature Titles: The Canterbury Tales

Media/Technology:
Draw My Life – Allyson of Bath
Wordle.com
Tagxedo.com
The Husband of Bath PDF

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Background:
This lesson will discuss the different characteristics of the Wife of Bath from The Canterbury Tales. Students will be able to analyze and understand the Wife of Bath’s role in the Middle Ages  by using different activities to interpret medieval life as represented in The Canterbury Tales.

Introduction:
Draw My Life – Allyson of Bath

Before first day of “Wife of Bath” instruction:

1. Have your students read the prologue and tale the night before. If they have trouble understanding the Middle English, suggest that they read a summary first and then attempt to read the text, or they can read the Harvard interlinear translation (https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/wbt-par.htm).
   1. Have students annotate their copy of the Middle English as they read. Advise them to come prepared to ask questions or share observations/insight.
      

First day of instruction:

1. Start a group discussion and ask for students to share their first impressions about the prologue and tale. Encourage them to ask questions or provide their analysis of certain scenes/quotes/etc.
2. Divide the class into groups, and have them each focus on one of the research sections of this website under Modern Interpretive Lenses. Each group should be responsible for reading and condensing the information into a presentation, and then presenting it to the class.
   1. Students of other groups should take notes on each presentation.

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Possible activities for students:

_{(Some inspired by: https://www.weareteachers.com/best-shakespeare-activities-printables/)}

1. Find an important scene or interaction and translate it into text messages. Write a paragraph response on why you chose that scene and how the texts encapsulate that scene.
2. Use the websites Wordle or Tagxedo to generate a word cloud comprised of words you select from the text. Discuss or write about the significance of your word choices.
3. Translate a scene into comic book form.
4. Create a playlist that captures important parts or emotions in the text. Explain your song choices.
5. Compare the Wife of Bath to other female or male characters in The Canterbury Tales.
6. Read the modern adaptations of the prologue and tale in which the characters’ genders have been reversed. Compare the two versions and analyze what changes occur when the genders of the characters are switched. How does this affect your reading? Why are those changes significant? Using research from this page, how might medieval audience have responded to the prologue and tale with its reversed genders?
   1. This could be a class discussion, group discussion, short paper, presentation, etc.
7. Create a vocabulary list for important terms that appear on the Modern Interpretive Lenses page.
8. Refer back to your annotations, connect reappearing ideas, and formulate an argumentative thesis about them. (A successful thesis should answer the WHAT, HOW, and WHY questions: What is the text saying? How is it saying it? Why is it important?)
   1. This can be just a thesis or it can turn into a full paper.