Spring 2003
T R 10:50-12:05
Maybank 220


Professor Myra Seaman
Office:      74 George St. , Room 101
Hours:     M T R 1:30-2:30; W 1:30-3:30;& by appt
Phone:     953-5760
E-mail:     seamanm@cofc.edu


ENGLISH 304: CHAUCER


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R  1-30
Memorization 1

Over the course of the semester, you will need to memorize three passages from three separate Chaucer texts. The purpose of this memorization exercise is not to torment you as you struggle with the language and the act of memorizing; instead, it is to encourage you to pay very close attention to the poetry itself -- the rhythm, the sound, the syntax, the overall effect of it as an oral expression -- not just the written material we find in the Riverside.

You will choose three selections of at least 15 lines and come into my office, during my office hours (MTR 1:30-2:30 and R 1:30-3:30) or by appointment, to recite your chosen passage, before the due date for each memorization exercise.

You may select any passage you find particularly attractive and inviting, or you can choose from the list below:

Lines 1-16 of "The Former Age"

Lines 1-15 of the Book of the Duchess

Lines 1-18 of the General Prologue

Lines 2837 - 2852 of the Knight's Tale

Lines 3687-3707 of the Miller's Tale

Lines 609-626 of the Wife of Bath's Prologue

Lines 1195-1212 of the Clerk's Tale

Lines 865-890 of the Franklin's Tale

Lines 2859/4049- 2876/4066 of the Nun's Priest's Tale



W 2-19
Paper 1

Your first paper is due on Wednesday, February 19, at noon in my office at 74 George St., Room 101.  Your paper must be at least six pages long, double-spaced, not counting the Works Cited page (which you do need to include, of course). Follow MLA style conventions for all text citations as well as for the heading and title. You can find thorough examples and explanation for these conventions online.

Following are a few topics for you to choose from. I insist that you begin with one of these topics, though as your paper develops you may bend them to suit your own interests as needed.  You must turn in a one-page description of your topic via e-mail by noon on Monday, February 10. I will respond promptly with suggestions.

Your paper must include one outside source – which might be introductory material from the Riverside, or an essay we’ve read for class, or information you locate online or in the library. As a result, your Works Cited page should include at least two entries.
A successful paper will demonstrate the following:
  • a thorough understanding of the text as a whole, as well as the specific sections you include in your analysis;
  • attention to the nuances of the language in the passage(s), explaining in some detail the reasons for your particular reading; and
  • an awareness of the significant elements of literary history and the cultural milieu in which the text was produced and read.
In addition, a successful paper will:
  • be structured according to a clearly-presented thesis, supporting that thesis with sufficient examples and in a logical fashion;
  • use MLA guidelines effectively; and
  • follow the standard rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Possible topics:
  1. Discuss the literary concerns and/or stylistic qualities of one or more of the lyrics we read at the beginning of the semester.

  2. Describe associations you have noted between one of the texts we have read thus far and any information you have gleaned from the Riverside introductions (or elsewhere, such as the Patterson lecture) regarding Chaucer’s life or the world in which he existed – including social, political, religious, scientific, and literary developments.

  3. Select a pilgrim from the General Prologue and present a reading of the character (and the narrator’s choices in presenting the character, if you will) based upon the description we are given. This may involve some brief research to determine the significance, to a medieval audience, of certain symbolic elements of the description.

  4.  Consider Chaucer’s satiric approach in the General Prologue. Critics tend to read his criticism as mild and far less moralistic than that of most estates satirists of his time. How do you read his tone here? You might focus on the representation of one character, or his use of the narrator, or anything else you find suggestive.  Jill Mann’s "Introduction" to Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire (on electronic reserve) may help you in your work with this topic.

  5. Choose a Middle English word, like “kynde,” which seems to you significant within Chaucer’s writing but which conveys an abstract meaning we have to work hard, from our late-twentieth-century perspective, to understand. Go through the various poems we have read and explain in detail the way you see Chaucer using the particular word.  (It need not appear in more than one poem, or even more than one passage, though the more frequently you can observe Chaucer’s use of it, the better, of course.)  You should base your explanation on contextual evidence in the poem(s) as well as on what you can discover in the Riverside glossary, A Chaucer Glossary, or in the Oxford English Dictionary (available online through the library’s online databases).

  6. Write a paper about Chaucer’s use of classical or Biblical figures or events in the poems we have read thus far.

  7. According to Lady Philosophy in the Consolation, the perfect world is a pattern for the natural world.  Explain how this is so, according to her.

  8. Consider the different conceptions of humanity’s relationship to God depicted by Boethius.

  9. How does free will affect human experience and individuals’ relationships to God, according to Boethius?

  10. Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale is traditionally understood as heavily influenced by ideas in Boethius’s Consolation, which Chaucer himself translated into Middle English. What aspects of the tale demonstrate Boethian influences?
R  3-13
Memorization 2


W 3-26
Annotated Bibliography (noon in my office at 74 George St., Room 101)

The Annotated Bibliography must contain at least 10 secondary sources (7 of these must be critical resources such as articles or book chapters); only ONE of these sources can be an article assigned for class discussion. Many such sources are on reserve at the library, although many other possible sources exist. (Your second paper will include at least 5 of these sources, 3 of which must be critical articles.) You can find very helpful examples of annotations, along with an explanation of the expectations of an annotated bibliography, online.


R  4-13
Memorization 3


W 4-23
Paper 2

Topics due:  Wednesday, April 2 (noon via e-mail)
Drafts due (not required): Tuesday, April 8 (in class)
Paper due: Wednesday, April 23 (noon in my office at 74 George St., Room 101)

Your second and final paper should be 8-10 pages long, double-spaced, not counting the Works Cited page. Follow MLA style conventions for all text citations as well as for the heading and title. You can find thorough examples and explanation for these conventions online. Papers must be typed, double-spaced, with one-inch margins.

Papers will be graded for grammar, style, and structure as well as for content; I’m always happy to discuss your rough drafts, revisions, research, and any general or specific questions about your writing, though this happiness can be guaranteed only when you arrive at my office prepared for such a discussion.

This paper will incorporate some of the information you discover while producing your Annotated Bibliography. The Annotated Bibliography must contain at least 10 secondary sources (7 of these must be critical resources such as articles or book chapters); only ONE of these sources can be an article assigned for class discussion. Your paper will include at least 5 of these sources, 3 of which must be critical articles. (Hence, your Works Cited page will have at least 6 entries, including the Riverside.)  You will need to hand in photocopies of three of these articles or chapters with your paper.

A successful paper will demonstrate the following:
  • a thorough understanding of the primary text as a whole, as well as the specific sections you address in your analysis;
  • attention to the nuances of Chaucer’s Middle English;
  • effective understanding and integration of (but not complete reliance upon) secondary source material; and
  • an awareness of the significant elements of literary history and the cultural milieu in which the text was produced and read.
In addition, a successful paper will:
  • be structured according to a clearly-presented thesis, supporting that thesis with sufficient examples and in a logical fashion;
  • use MLA guidelines effectively; and
  • follow the standard rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
Possible topics follow:
 
1. Courtly Love and the Knight's and Miller’s Tales

2. Astrology in the Canterbury Tales

3. Antifeminism and the Nun's Priest's Tale and/or the Wife of Bath’s Prologue (or, more broadly, ‘The Wife of Bath's Prologue and/or the Nun’s Priest’s Tale and Medieval Attitudes about Women’)

4. Fidelity in Marriage in the Wife of Bath's Tale and/or the Franklin's Tale and/or the Clerk’s Tale

5. The Role of the Wife in the Wife of Bath's Tale or the Franklin's Tale or the Clerk's Tale or the Nun’s Priest’s Tale

6. Medieval Clergy (Regular and Secular) and Chaucer's Religious Pilgrims

7. The Second Nun's Tale and Saints' Lives

8. Chaucer and Medieval Manuscripts

9. Female Beauty in the Fourteenth Century and its influence on the Canterbury Tales

10. Fashion in the Fourteenth Century and its influence on the Canterbury Tales

11. The Clerk (the pilgrim) and/or the Miller's and Reeve's Tales' Clerks and the Medieval University

12. The Nun's Priest's Tale and Medieval Beast Fables

13. The Nun's Priest's Tale and Medieval Ideas About Dreams

14. Medieval Rhetoric and the Canterbury Tales

15. Fragments and the Arrangements of the Canterbury Tales

16. The Suitability of Tale to Teller in (one or more of) the Canterbury Tales (Choose your tales carefully.)

17. The Problem of Exchange in Chaucer [Read Shoaf and consider monetary exchanges, as well as exchanges of money for "spiritual" goods and the sale of the body.]

18. Chaucer's Use of the Classics [Consider Ovid and/or Virgil.]

19. Boccaccio, Chaucer and the "Framed Tale"

20. The Oppositions of Authority and Experience in Chaucer

21. The Problem of Reading in Chaucer: The Question of Text and Gloss [Dinshaw’s article is an excellent starting point.]

22. The Rhetoric of Love in Chaucer

23. Chaucer’s Sources and Analogues:
Compare Chaucer’s version of a given tale with a source or analogue in order to see what kinds of changes or adaptations Chaucer made to the material he found.

Using the Harvard Chaucer Page, locate a source or analogue to your chosen tale. (Click on the particular tale you’d like to use, and then on that tale’s page you will find all sorts of information, including a link to the relevant parts of the source or analogue.)  Keeping in mind the different historical settings of each version, delve into an examination of gender dynamics in the two tales, the use of language,  the depiction of society, the exercise of power, or other such topics. Ultimately, what you need to consider is what Chaucer's purpose might have been in adapting these tales in the particular way he does.
Here are a few possibilities:
  • The Reeve's Tale: Day 9, Tale 6 (from Boccaccio's Decameron)

  • The Wife of Bath’s Prologue: the Duenna’s speech (from Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose)

  • The Wife of Bath’s Tale: The Weddyng of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell and/or John Gower’s Tale of Florent

  • The Clerk’s Tale: Day 10, Tale 10 (from Boccaccio’s Decameron)

  • The Franklin's Tale:  Day 10, Tale 5 (from Boccaccio's Decameron)

  • The Nun’s Priest’s Tale: Marie de France’s Tale of the Fox and the Cock

  • The Second Nun's TaleThe Life of St. Cecilia (from Caxton's edition of The Golden Legend)