Today I read the Book of the Duchess. The kind of close reading, with attention to variants, that essay work requires takes about a million years. But I can’t deny that even this early work stuff is actually quite good.

I read most of book I of Troilus yesterday and it just strikes me again how great this stuff is. Entertaining, funny, brilliant, acerbic. And it’s not actually 1000 pages, it’s more like seven hundred if I don’t read the notes. I have two essays due on Chaucer like, now, so I gotta remind myself I actually like this stuff. Gotta do some dream poetry and a goodly chunk out of the Canterbury tales the next three days. Two essays in three days is doable… right?

It’s 1300 pages. Even with the introductions and glossaries excepted it’s something like 1000 pages. I HAVE read chunks of it, but not enough. I do quite like it, and my Middle English is all right, but the fact that I have to read it kinda rains on my parade a little bit.

My target for tonight is to read lines 750-777 of Book 1 for Troilus and Criseyde. (I’m writing a commentary on them tomo morning). That’ll take about 10 minutes even if I take notes. Afterwards I get to read something I genuinely feel like until I fall asleep!

The Canterbury Tales. All of them!