Thread: Interesting writing assignment for English

I'm kind of excited about this:

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales provides modern readers some insight into society and its structure in Chaucer's time. His pilgrims, all headed to Canterbury Cathedral, represent three distinct groups of English society the wealthy and noble, the working class, and the clergy. The three stories we read included a representative of each group: the Wife of Bath is wealthy, the Miller is a member of the working class, and the Pardoner is part of the clergy.The Pardoner's tale was designed to instill guilt in the listeners so they would give him money. The Wife's tale suggests that no one should question that she runs her own marriage. The Miller's tale is a ribald one intended to make the listeners laugh at the expense of all the foolish characters.

ASSIGNMENT: Imagine you have been commissioned to write a modern version of Canterbury Tales based on our society. What groups would be represented? What would their common destination be? What kinds of stories would they tell?

GOAL: Think critically about our own society.

PARTS:
1. Identify what society you are analyzing. You can go broad (America) or narrow (high school).
2. Identify three subsets of that society.
3. Identify three types of people you'd find in each subset. [e.g. Chaucer gives us a Knight, a Squire, and the Wife of bath as part of the wealthy/noble group] This will create a total of nine people, three people in each of the three groups.
4. For one person in each group, give a brief synopsis of the story that person tells. A brief summary of the plot along with the intended theme will suffice. This will create a total of three story synopses, one for one member of each of the three groups.
5. Identify the common destination of the entire group. Where are they all going and why? If you're really clever, you'll come up with a reason why they are able to tell stories to one another as they travel.

I'm looking forward to finally getting to be creative in English. It's just been essay after essay after essay. I'm thinking about doing something based on economy. Big CEO vs office secretary vs Mcdonald's employee or something.

What would you guys write about?

Wealthy and noble is a strange way to define the sub-set. Society in the middle ages was usually seen as divided into three estates of man; those who worked, those who fought, and those who prayed.

How about.
Those who direct, the boss class
Those who administer, the paper pushers
Those who serve, the service industries
Those who produce, manufacturing industry

Those who pray have just about vanished, how about those who entertain?

Modern society in the UK has a real problem with, and I make no apologies for using this term, an underclass who refuse to work or contribute to society in anyway other than that which causes strains on the system.

Perhaps I would look at the working class, the underclass, and the immigrant section of society, which has grown massively in the past decade to decade and a half. A common view shared by many in the area where I live is one of distrust, towards the modern immigrant population, and so there is scope to explore the relationship between the workers and the scroungers, the workers and the immigrants, and the challenges and tensions the immigrants face etc. etc. I'm not sure if it would work, though I'd like to think it would.

Maybe it would be set in the run-up to a general election, or maybe on polling day.

Good luck, Dreamworx, with your project.

If you're really clever, you'll come up with a reason why they are able to tell stories to one another as they travel.

That struck me as the easy bit, it's when travel breaks down people start to talk in modern society, the snow bound airport, the train stuck in a tunnel, something like that.

You could base them on characters from the forum, for example writ with hand, Ditch and Baron make a pretty diverse group, but they have all served in the armed forces at different times and with differing effects on them. There is nothing in the original instructions which says they must be travelling, only a recreation of Chaucer, and a forum is where a group of modern day, diverse, strangers start talking, I can't imagine many other situations where I would make friends with an eighteen year old on an equal footing.

1. Identify what society you are analyzing. You can go broad (America) or narrow (high school).

Wow, really?

I actually stopped reading at that because it gave me pause and surprised me. So in the US broad means just America? To me broad would automatically mean international. An interesting and enlightening glimpse into another nation's cultural mindset for sure.

Anyway, good luck with the assignment. It sounds like a good one.

Originally Posted by Candra H

So in the US broad means just America? To me broad would automatically mean international. An interesting and enlightening glimpse into another nation's cultural mindset for sure.

I saw that too, but at the time couldn't be bothered logging in to comment. Now I know there are others...

Don't you think cultural mindset, in that context, is an oxymoron?

A Chaucerberry Tale


I think for my piece I would abandon the idea of a journey through geography and choose one through time only. The idea of a heterogeneous group traveling together is a more natural one for the fourteenth century than for modern times. It would be natural for those people to do it for security and the leisurely means of transport available to them are also more conducive to storytelling than modern means. I think my group will have a goal in the future but they will be waiting in one spot to reach it. A sequestered jury, on which I have almost served, came to mind but I think I can do better in terms of commonality of goal.

Chaucer has his pilgrims traveling to a destination, but in the Decameron, on which he almost certainly modeled the Tales, the travelers are going somewhere but their motivation is to flee disaster, specifically plague in the city. This is an interesting scenario, one remembers people waiting in the Superdome for the waters to recede, or traveling in busses for that matter. Though these particular refugees were not exactly a cross section of society, in some situations, with other disasters, they might be.

Although one mightn't suspect it from the very tame interpretation prefacing this assignment, the Tales and the Decameron are both sort of reform polemics. In those centuries there was much dissatisfaction, with both religious and secular governance. Publishing however was a very narrow proposition and the reading audience of mostly ecclesiastics and aristocrats would contain the very persons one would be satirizing and criticizing. Chaucer himself was very much a successful member of this class. The polemic is therefore necessarily very subtle and clever, however just the idea of using written language for a story with this level of class interaction would have been perceived as pretty radical.

Irregardless of the extent which Chaucer includes it, which we may debate but probably never know certainly, this angle of protesting social issues is one which I would emphasize in my piece and I think the perfect situation will be a sit-down occupation. It will be set in a small private college whose similarities to my high school will be unmistakable. (Undoubtedly some of the personalities will also be recognizable, but then, I'm much given to caricature.) In my case I think the protest will hearken back to the divestment of South African assets popular on campuses before the fall of Apartheid. A plethora of other issues are possible, on every side of the spectrum, progressive to conservative. One imagines for example, what the fundamentalist polity of one of these evangelical colleges might care about.

In my piece there will be considerable support for the divestment not only among the student body but also in the faculty and administration. However the chairman of the board of directors is an old Boer or something who will veto any proposition. He says something to the effect that he doesn't believe anybody really cares about the issue—not enough to make a serious commitment—and so to show him different a rather lengthy occupation of the administration building is organized. This is an amicable take-over, mostly supported by all three sections of the institution: students, faculty and administration. A janitor and a staff nurse are provided and catering stocks supplies and leaves a person to oversee distribution; these personnel, paid from protest donations, are not necessarily supporters of the action. Neither is necessarily a secretary who volunteers to monitor the files but otherwise all three sections are represented by believers, or at least, occupation enthusiasts. One would like to examine motivation carefully and individually. This would be the environment in which people would tell their stories.

Very interesting prompt, good luck with it. pp


P. S. I think that both in the context of redoing the Tales, which travels what, only a half county and a tiny English one at that, and as perihelion to the smallness of the high school example, America is of sufficient extent to be legitimately considered broad. Global would of course be even broader but maybe unnecessarily so and unnecessarily difficult to define as a describable society. I really hope the Comminwealth raggerson can this time resist the urge to hijack a rather delightful thread, especially when the grievous insult isn't even attributable to the poster. I actually have often considerable sympathy for their position but I think this time their comments aren't particularly pertinent. Were the instructor here translated antipodally, I could easily see her/him considering Oz sufficiently broad for this particular exercise. In a way, I think that a certain rabid zeal has this time overshot the mark and that perhaps an apology is owed DW for these off-topic asides.

Originally Posted by Candra H

Wow, really?

I actually stopped reading at that because it gave me pause and surprised me. So in the US broad means just America? To me broad would automatically mean international. An interesting and enlightening glimpse into another nation's cultural mindset for sure.

Anyway, good luck with the assignment. It sounds like a good one.

This tripped me up too. I was already traveling overseas when I remembered it was supposed to be in America. And probably not the whole of America.
And if you like what you've done, maybe share it with us? I am curious to see what you come up with. It does sound fun.

Originally Posted by Candra H

Wow, really?

I actually stopped reading at that because it gave me pause and surprised me. So in the US broad means just America? To me broad would automatically mean international. An interesting and enlightening glimpse into another nation's cultural mindset for sure.

Anyway, good luck with the assignment. It sounds like a good one.

I don't quite understand the controversy about this. The assignment was presumably given in an American school in the U.S., and one of the goals of the assignment is to think critically about "our own" (in this case U.S.) society. And I would argue that American society IS a pretty broad topic. I don't see why it would be perceived as being indicative of a self-centered cultural mindset just to refer to American society as being "broad."

If the student were French, and the teacher suggested that French culture was "broad" would there be any problem with that? To me it just doesn't automatically imply that the teacher thinks their native country is the center of the universe or anything...

I took it to mean "Broad, for example America", not "America or high school, no other options". In fact looking at it I am sure the 'for example' is implicit and it could be any large or small social group, I think you are creating something that did not exist.

Interesting thoughts pp. You are right , he was radical for his time, writing in English was pretty much so anyway. Developing the idea of a journey not necessarily being spatial, it could be a learning journey rather than a temporal one.

Yeah I'm sure my teacher doesn't care what our interpretation of "broad" is as long as we follow the prompt.

I can't imagine many other situations where I would make friends with an eighteen year old on an equal footing.

But I'm not just any eighteen year old. I'm Dreamworx95.

Originally Posted by Olly Buckle

I can't imagine many other situations where I would make friends with an eighteen year old on an equal footing.

Tell me about it. "Equal footing" is where it falls down.

Originally Posted by Dreamworx95

But I'm not just any eighteen year old. I'm Dreamworx95.

Women, they always take things personally.