I’ve been working my way through The Canterbury Tales. It’s better to read than Beowulf, but the trade-off is that I’m reading it in the original Middle English, which is considerably less fun to read than Beowulf in modern English.
It makes what could be a really interesting story into a chore. I don’t know if that was the professor’s intention, of course… I suspect he just sees it as an interesting layer of flavour, much in the way most people don’t “modernize” the text of Shakespeare. But man is it sucking all the potential joy for this story out of the pages for me.
Ah well. I’m still gonna finish it, and I look forward to moving up in time (I think this is the last of the “not-modern” English we study this semester… with any luck, this will be the last not-modern English I study for my degree!).
Anyway, I should get back to it. I have a big assignment due next week that I want to get started on, and that requires finishing this story, AND I have about twenty-bazillion words I want to write for the novel… ah! So much to do, so little time!
Hope everyone out there is safe and healthy!