English 271/Mr. Kelley
Regarding the out-of-class paper
The OUT-OF-CLASS PAPER is a researched essay analyzing any ONE of the pilgrims of
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. You will need to read Chaucer’s “General Prologue” as well as the tale your
chosen character tells and any sections recording his interaction with the other pilgrims, any comments
made by the narrator, etc. Your essay should analyze the pilgrim, according to what Chaucer shows us
about the character. What appears to motivate the character? What kind of person is he? Does the tale he
tells fit his personality? What about his manner of telling it? What about his reason for telling it: in other
words, is he telling it in response to things said or done by the other pilgrims? Does he connect with any
ideas in the work? What does Chaucer seem to think about him? You might also consider such points as
imagery, theme, irony, structure, satire, comic devices, historical background, and poetic technique.
DON’T DEAL WITH ALL THESE POINTS, but you might deal with one or two of them. This paper
should be five-seven typewritten pages, double-spaced, with one-inch margins. Employ a 10 or 12 point,
New Roman or Courier New font, if you’re using Microsoft, or a similar size if you use a different
program. Include five secondary sources and a “Works Cited” page. Follow the MLA format. Use
parenthetical documentation. Write formally, in third person, and use present tense in discussing the
literature.
ON FINDING INFORMATION: Chaucer has already done much of the work for you, in a sense;
his own analysis of his characters provides an excellent starting point. I suggest picking one of the livelier
characters: one who appears frequently, tells a good story, or creates interest in some other fashion, and
happens to be the subject of much modern critical interpretation. Some of the more interesting pilgrims
include the three whose tales are reprinted in your book (the Miller, the Pardoner, and the Wife of Bath).
Other good subjects include the Prioress, the Nun’s Priest, the Knight, the Monk, the Reeve, the
Summoner, the Friar, and “Chaucer” himself, that is, the narrator. Scholars have written about Chaucer’s
lively crew for centuries, so there’s plenty of criticism available. One excellent work, R. M. Lumiansky’s
Of Sondry Folk, analyzes each pilgrim thoroughly. Lumiansky also translated the Tales into modern prose,
and his book can easily be found in cheap paperback editions, if you’re having trouble reading Chaucer in
the original Middle English. Theodore Morrison’s verse translation in our textbook is also good. There are
many other modern translations, but the best way to read Chaucer is in the original, which is not that
difficult in an edition containing a glossary.
Books on Chaucer’s pilgrims abound, but don’t forget to look for articles in scholarly journals.
Check the Humanities Index or the MLA Bibliography to find when and where articles were printed. Our
library’s reference room also contains two volumes of Chaucerian Bibliography to help students find what
has been published. Northwest-Shoals gets a number of scholarly journals, and through the Alabama
Virtual Library you have access to many more. Of course if you have time to research in other libraries,
your options will only increase.
Many previously published articles have been gathered in anthologies of criticism, some of them
restricted to one pilgrim. For instance, the Twentieth Century Interpretations series or the Modern Critical
Interpretations series edited by Harold Bloom both offer more articles on a given character than you’ll have
time to read. Articles in the Dictionary of Literary Biography (the volume covering Medieval British
authors), the Cambridge History of English Literature, and Baugh’s Literary History of England can also
be helpful. There are Chaucerian Glossaries (Chaucer’s Bawdy is quite interesting), studies of science in
Chaucer’s age, studies of warfare, religion, symbolism, courtly ritual, and so on. In other words, there’s
more than enough to go around for every student in this class and then some. Works you may wish to
consult but YOU MAY NOT USE AS SOURCES include Masterplots, Cliff Notes, Spark Notes, Monarch
Notes, the Bible, standard dictionaries, encyclopedias, or popular magazines such as Time. You certainly
should use a dictionary in your writing, and the Bible may be very useful in checking the Pilgrim’s
allusions, but these are not the sorts of sources one lists on a college-level research paper. (Note that neither
the King James Bible nor Webster’s Dictionary existed in Chaucer’s day; don’t assume that Chaucer
intended scriptural interpretations or definitions of words that are more modern than this very worldly
fourteenth-century man.)
ABOUT MLA FORMAT: This is fully explained and illustrated in the Hodges Harbrace College
Handbook, 14th edition, chapter 38. Pages 565-89 discuss how to integrate sources properly, using
quotation, paraphrase, and summary without plagiarizing, and how to employ parenthetical documentation
correctly. Pages 592-610 demonstrate the proper format to list the works you use for your paper. Here are
sample bibliographical formats for the types of sources you’ll most likely use:
[for an article original published in a scholarly journal, now reprinted in an anthology (such as the “Bloom
books”)]:
Brooks, Douglas and Alastair Fowler. “The Meaning of Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale.”
Medium Aevum 39.2 (1970). Rpt. in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale. Ed. Harold Bloom.
Modern Critical Interpretations. New York: Chelsea House, 1988. 35-58.
[for a book by a single author]:
Curry, Walter Clyde. Chaucer and the Medieval Sciences. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1942.
[for a translated version of Chaucer in a literary anthology]:
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Miller’s Prologue and Tale.” Trans. Theodore Morrison. The
Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Vol. 1. Ed. by Sarah Lawall, et. al. 7 th ed. New York:
Norton, 1999. 1534-48.
[for an article in a scholarly journal]:
Kaske, R. E. “January’s ‘Aube.’” Modern Language Notes 75 (1960): 1-4.