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If Chaucer makes a comeback in the proposed English curriculum rewrite, we shouldn’t dismiss what his work tells us about human nature – and contemporary New Zealand.
Wikimedia
A poem about birds meeting in February to pick their mates is the first known example of Valentine’s day being connected with love.
IanDagnall Computing/Alamy
How Chaucer’s medieval Wife of Bath continues to make her voice heard
They call her The Wife of Willesden.
Marc Brenner
Zadie Smith’s first play delivers on what women want.
By - https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/emotions/self.html , , Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1684469.
Elaine and Arthur Shapiro/Wikimedia Commons
A whistle-stop tour of the history of placebos.
Unsplash/Juan Di Nella
Summer is the time for road trips — and books that can take you on a journey of discovery.
Chaucer at the Court of Edward III by Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893)
Wikiart
When we feel under siege, Chaucer’s doomed love story during the battle for Troy might be just the distraction we need.
Comedian, writer, historian: Terry Jones was a man of many parts and well loved in all his fields.
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The Monty Python star was also a highly respected author on Chaucer and the writer of a series of children’s history books.
Relics of St. Valentine of Terni at the basilica of Saint Mary in Cosmedin.
Dnalor 01 (Own work)
Valentine’s Day originated as a feast to celebrate the decapitation of a third-century Christian martyr, or perhaps two. It took a gruesome path to becoming a romantic holiday.
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E L James’ BDSM fantasies and Chaucer’s 14th-century story raise the same age-old questions.
US President Donald Trump.
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Old habits die hard.
In Sir Thomas Malory’s ‘Le Morte d'Arthur,’ a character complains that young people are too sexually promiscuous.
The British Library
The anxiety that young people are messing things up goes back centuries.
Netflix
The series has divided critics: many have praised its sensitive depiction of rape and suicide, others have said it romantises taking one’s own life.
PA/PA Archive
One of English poetry’s most recognisable voices has been memorialised in Westminster Abbey.
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Nomad_Soul
What research tells us about the ripest Anglo Saxon. Parental Advisory: explicit content.
Lovebirds in the 14th-century Codex Manesse (Cod. Pal. germ. 848, f. 249v).
Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg
How about some fowl play this Medieval Valentine’s day?
English caricaturist Richard Newton’s 1798 cartoon depicts John Bull farting on the face of King George III.
Library of Congress
They’re rude, crude and uncouth. So what makes farts so funny?
Canterbury Tales mural (1939), Library of Congress.
The Refugee Tales is a modern reconstruction of Chaucer’s classic pilgrimage – this time, telling the largely unspoken realities of immigration detention.
From “Ha!” to “LOL,” laughter in text can take on a number of forms and meanings.
'Laughter' via www.shutterstock.com
Shakespeare didn’t ‘lol,’ but he did ‘ha, ha, he.’
Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickens: are there no new books to compare?
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Do English texts stay the same over the decades because there are no good modern books? Or because the process of selecting new books is just too hard?