First, read the Introduction and see how the folk tale and wisdom literature elements are presented. If your students are interested in this, there is a wealth of material for them to use in writing/researching a paper on many of the stories.
Second, in a multi-level class, you can have all the students read the actual Alphonsus story, then have the more advanced students read either the Gesta versions or the other Latin sources that are presented with each story. The less advanced students can read about the wisdom/folk tale origins in English and add their commentary.
You can also have students write their own moral to the story, whether it’s the Alphonsus or the Gesta version.
Story-telling might actually be the “oldest profession.” While the stories all have a supposed moral, quite frankly they offer great entertainment value. Most of them are short and give you a good feeling for the culture of the Middle Ages.
Many of Alphonsus’ stories were later used in the Gesta Romanorum, and he also gathered stories from all over: India, the Near East (Christian, Jewish and Muslim) and Europe. They are a combination of folktales and wisdom literature, all of which is carefully explained in the notes to both the text and the book itself.
Like much of Medieval Latin, the prose is straight-forward and the word order easy to understand. Once you have gotten accustomed to the spelling (e.g., c instead of t, cepit instead of coepit), which is explained in the notes, and think of the English derivatives, the translating is easy, and the text can even be read without conscious translation. The discussion questions can lead to further conversation and study.
