The Canterbury Tales:
Write Your Own Prologue
One of the world's most influential and popular writers is Geoffrey Chaucer who wrote his Canterbury Tales in the last decades of the fourteenth century. This webquest requires you to use the information you learned from your recent unit in World History related to occupations of the Middle Ages and combine that knowledge with new information you will learn about Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales. Ultimately, you will produce an illuminated poem in iambic pentameter (or as close as you can get to it - it's not easy!) about the person you researched in World History. Follow the steps below to become a Medieval poet and manuscript illuminator! You should take some general notes on the following sites for later reference.
Task One
Read about Chaucer's works.
Task Two
Read about Medieval pilgrimages.
Task Three
Read about the shrine and then take a tour of Canterbury Cathedral.
Task Four
For future use with your poem, take a look at this site which features Middle English pronunciation. http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/pronunciation/
Task Five
Now it's time to write your own Chaucerian-style poem using the person you researched in World History.
_ Use iambic pentameter insofar as possible
_ Write in couplets
_ Describe your person physically using the characters in the prologue as examples
_ Describe your character's clothing and accessories
_ Describe your character's occupation
_ Include some information about Canterbury Cathedral
_ Include at least three Middle English words
_ At home, dye a sheet of paper in tea to make it look like parchment or actually use parchment paper or paper that looks aged
_ Print your poem on the paper in black ink; you may do this on the computer if you use an appropriate font that is bold-faced for clarity. Extra credit will be given for hand written poems.
_ Illuminate the poem using the following site as an example. You may reproduce illuminations from the site or create your own. You may not simply cut and paste. Chaucer illuminated manuscript
_The more authentic your poem looks, the more credit you will get. In other words, time and effort count heavily.