Week November 23

 Chaucer was heavily into numerology and astrology. Could this have an effect on why the Wife of Bath had 5 husbands? Could this new information make her trustworthy or less trustworthy?

Week November 16

 Chaucer devotes no fewer than eighteen lines to describing the Pardoner's relics, and in his own prologue, the Pardoner himself calls attention to his "sholder-boon / Which that was of an hoolyjewes sheep" (VI 350-51), among other relics. Explain why you think he might place this much emphasis on the relics?

Week November 2nd

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, most critics have noted her name, Ratched, as recalling ratchet to connect her as obviously as possible to a machinic nature. Kesey himself makes another blatant pun, "Rat-shed" (87), in order to suggest that she personifies a giant cage in which the rat-like mental patients are imprisoned. (Another allusion might point to Orwell's 1984 and the "rat-sheds" strapped on the face of dissidents, making the connection between Big Brother and Big Nurse.) From the start we are directed to see her as monstrous, as when she arrives on the war. Do you believe the critics? Is she a monster? Or could she be a heroine to women who have never had any power of their own? How do you view her?