Our first goal will be an ability to read and comprehend Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in Middle English, including an ability to read Chaucer aloud with a reasonably accurate ME pronunciation. The memory exercise is designed to aid in acquiring this ability. Secondly, through our reading and class discussions we want to come to an appreciation for -- and enjoyment of -- what Chaucer accomplishes in The Canterbury Tales; the poem (or should it be plural?) is a wonderfully complex literary structure in which the individual tales and tale-tellers are thematically and dramatically interrelated.  In the process of reading and interpreting Chaucer, and reading around Chaucer, we should also achieve some understanding of the late fourteenth century, the cultural context of his poem.