New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession

This essay explores how I taught, in its entirety, my Piers Plowman: A Translation of the A Version: Revised Edition (Calabrese 2023) for sophomore English majors, who had little or no prior experience with medieval literature. In the required, multi-sectioned English 3000 (called “tutorial”) students focus for an entire semester on one text of the professor’s choosing and read it slowly.  No surprise that I choose Piers Plowman in my own translation, for Piers can teach students so much about genre, poetic form, voice, allegory, and a host of other devices and key literary concepts. Plus, its critical tradition and engagement in history are robust and thus perfect for introducing the students to academic research.