Canterbury Tales 8 - The Animated Tales - Movie and Questions
"Kane will be a dead man in half an hour and nobody's gonna do anything about it. And when he dies, this town dies too. I can feel it.''
Canterbury Tales 8 -The Animated Movie & Questions: There is so much that is both profane and beautiful in this film (really, a series of films - strung together with a frame story using stop-motion animation. The interpretations of the tales that the movie is based on are exquisite and unique. The different stories were done by different animators - and so there is kind of "meta" quality to the movie. It imitates the structure and unique content of the written tales....
Lesson Overview
WARNING: There is content in this movie (as with Chaucer's Tales) that may be inappropriate for your students. Make sure you watch and evaluate everything before you show it to your own classes. As with all of my movie questions (see my page) there are questions in bold (easy to see) that are to be answered while watching the movie in class - and questions in italics (thoughtful, critical thinking mini-essays) that are to be answered afterwards. Besides the banter between the characters (most of it directly from Chaucer), these are the Tales that I show in class (it can all be shown in one 45 minute period): "The Merchant's Tale", "The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale", "The Franklin's Prologue and Tale", "The Squire's Tale". All of the answers should be put together (the in-class and at home) and I insist on hand written (to make copying less attractive). All of these tales are contiguous in the movie - so you don't need to skip around (unless you are censoring certain parts). Here are my instructions from the handout (there is an Honors & a Regular version of this assignment) found below:
Begin by quickly getting out your charts (and the picture with the arrows) of all the characters from “The Prologue.” Watch closely and keep a running list of how many characters (the claymation ones) that you can identify (you may be surprised by the number). The questions and parts of the questions in bold face below are what should be given attention during the movie – the other parts of the questions (thinking parts are in italics) should be contemplated afterwards.
Handouts
Audio Visual Content
These are availble on YouTube (unfortunately the DVD is no longer available)
This is a link to Part 1 of The Canterbury Tales - The Animated Movie - Arriving at Canterbury
This is a link to Part 2 of The Canterbury Tales - The Animated Move - The Journey Back
Remote Enhancements
There are many ways to use this remotely - if you have the actual movie file, you can stream it to your class - or alternatively you can share the YouTube link.
Class Recordings (for registered members)
Audio
Video
Canterbury Tales 9 - Federigo's Falcon from The Decameron. So this work is not from The Canterbury Tales - but instead, from the work that inspired Chaucer to write his tales. Like with Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Prologue" - there is much here (directly & ironically) that addresses the plight of women in medieval Europe. It is also great to bring in a nonBritish (it's Italian) text to our discussion.
WHAT CAME BEFORE:
Thoughts on the Lesson
It's great for the students after reading so much about The Tales - to see them come to life. To recognize them. As I said in the intro - some of these animations are sublime - and some are so very coarse - a great reminder of Chaucer's Tales themselves.