Varieties of Middle English Pronunciation Aids and Goals

Print diagrams and descriptions of the "Great Vowel Shift"--to encourage accurate pronunciation of East Midlands Middle English for reading Chaucer aloud (valuable for rhyming words in verse, and for disambiguating words with orthography that misleads the ModE-trained eye)

Pre-recorded records, tapes, CD-ROMs, and online digital files--to encourage accurate pronunciation of East Midlands Middle English for reading Chaucer aloud (valuable for rhyming words in verse, and for disambiguating words with orthography that misleads the ModE-trained eye);  to recover other Middle English dialects (e.g., Pearl-Poet, Malory) and to encourage dramatic realization of "the performed work" and interpretation of its dramatic significance (poem as drama).

Student-recorded parallel text voice board performances--to encourage accurate pronunciation of East Midlands Middle English for reading Chaucer aloud (valuable for rhyming words in verse, and for disambiguating words with orthography that misleads the ModE-trained eye); to recover other Middle English dialects (e.g., Pearl-Poet, Malory) and to encourage dramatic realization of "the performed work" and interpretation of its dramatic significance (poem as drama); to encourage interpretation of the work as an oral/aural audience would have received it in performance in C14-16; to encourage detection of humor, irony, ambiguity, paradox, lies, and other phonologically "overcoded" meanings of the text.