ELit 6-471 Chaucer
Spring semester 2014
Prof. Karin Boklund-Lagopoulou
office: 306B
office hours: Mon 11.00-12.00 and 14.0015.00, Wed 14.00-15.00 and by appointment
Course description
The course is a study of the main works of Chaucer in relation to the social environment
in which he worked and the medieval literary genres he drew upon. Readings will
include two early dream visions (The Book of the Duchess and The Parliament of
Fowls), Troilus and Criseyde, selections from The Canterbury Tales, and some of the
shorter lyrics.
It is desirable, though not absolutely necessary, for students to have passed ELit 6-240
Medieval Literature before attempting this course.
Upon completion of the course, students should:
– be familiar with the main works of the Chaucer canon and the most important
critical approaches to them
– be able to read and understand Chaucerian texts in the original Middle English
with the help of marginal glosses and footnotes
– be able to comment intelligently on their form and content
– be acquainted with the basic critical literature on some aspect of Chaucer’s work
– be able to present and discuss critical opinions in a brief researched essay.
Assessment
Assessment will be through written examination and a brief, researched critical essay.
Bibliography for the essay is available on Reserve in the library.
Textbook
The Riverside Chaucer (editor Larry Benson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987;
2nd edition 1989) is the textbook for this course. This is the standard edition of
Chaucer’s works, and includes valuable prefaces and critical notes. Translations of the
Canterbury Tales are available in the Library and can be used as a supplement to the
original text; students should note, however, that in class and for exams we will use
the original Middle English text.
ELit 6-471E Chaucer
Spring semester 2014
Prof. Karin Boklund-Lagopoulou
office: 306B
office hours: Mon 11.00-12.00 and 14.0015.00, Wed 14.00-15.00 and by appointment
Course outline
Week 1
Introduction. Chaucer’s life in context
Week 2
The Dream Visions: Book of the Duchess, Parliament of Fowls.
Week 3
Troilus and Criseyde, Books I and II
Week 4
Troilus and Criseyde, Books II and III
Week 5
Troilus and Criseyde, Books III and IV. Chaucer and Boethius
Week 6
Troilus and Criseyde, Books IV and V
Week 7
Introduction to The Canterbury Tales. Lyrics (Truth, Gentilesse)
Chaucer’s experiments with genres. The General Prologue
Week 8
Romance: Knight’s Tale, Franklin’s Tale.
Week 9
Fabliau: Miller’s Tale, Reeve’s Tale, Merchant’s Tale
Week 10
“Marriage Group”: Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, Merchant’s Tale,
Clerk’s Tale, Franklin’s Tale. Chaucer’s women
Week 11
Teller and Tale: Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale, Wife of Bath’s Prologue
and Tale, Tale of Sir Thopaz
Week 12
Folktale, saint’s legend, beast fable: Clerk’s Tale, Prioress’s Tale, Nun’s
Priest’s Tale. Pathos and form.
Week 13
Didacticism: Knight’s Tale, Clerk’s Tale, Pardoner’s Tale, Nun’s
Priest’s Tale (Parson’s Tale). Chaucer’s Retraction
ELit 6-471E Chaucer
Bibliography
The following books have been placed on Reserve in the English Department library.
All students are expected to consult relevant critical material.
Please note that much valuable information and critical comments are available in the
textbook for the course, The Riverside Chaucer (editor Larry Benson. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1987; 2nd edition 1989).
Medieval Literature: Chaucer and the Alliterative Tradition. The New Pelican Guide to
English Literature, vol. I part 1. Boris Ford, ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,
1982.
Aers, David. Chaucer. Brighton: Harvester, 1986.
Aers, David. Chaucer, Langland and the Creative Imagination. London: Routledge,
1980.
Bennett, H.S. Chaucer and the Fifteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947.
Boitani, Piero. English Medieval Narrative in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Boitani, Piero and Jill Mann. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Brewer, Derek. Chaucer in His Time. London: Longman, 1973.
Brewer, Derek, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Cambridge: Brewer, 1974, 1990.
Burrow, J.A. Medieval Writers and Their Work. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1982.
Coghill, Nevill. Geoffrey Chaucer. London: Longman, for the British Council and the
National Book League, 1959, 1969.
Cooke, Thomas D. The Old French and Chaucerian Fabliaux. Columbia and London:
Univ. of Missouri Press, 1978.
Corsa, Helen Storm. Chaucer, Poet of Mirth and Morality. Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. of
Notre Dame Press, 1964.
Donaldson, E. Talbot. Speaking of Chaucer. Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 1983.
Everett, Dorothy. Essays on Middle English Literature. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1959. Reprint Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978.
Green, Richard Firth. Poets and Princepleasers. Toronto, etc.: University of Toronto
Press, 1980.
Hussey, Maurice. Chaucer’s World. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1967.
Hussey, Maurice. An Introduction to Chaucer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1965.
James, Dolan Michael. Chaucer and the Continental Tradition. Doctoral dissertation,
Cornell University, 1974. University Microfilms.
Lawton, David. Chaucer’s Narrators. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 1985.
Mann, Jill. Geoffrey Chaucer. New York, etc.: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991.
Martin, Priscilla. Chaucer’s Women: Nuns, Wives, and Amazons. Iowa City: Univ. of
Iowa Press, 1990.
Muscatine, Charles. Chaucer and the French Tradition. Berkeley, etc.: Univ. of
California Press, 1957.
Patterson, Lee. Chaucer and the Subject of History. Madison, Wisconsin: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1991.
Pearsall, Derek. The Canterbury Tales. London & New York: Routledge, 1994.
Robertson, D.W.Jr. A Preface to Chaucer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1962.
Rowland, Beryl. Companion to Chaucer Studies. New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1979.
Ruggiers, Paul G. The Art of the Canterbury Tales. Madison, Milwaukee and London:
Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1965.
Salter, Elizabeth. English and International: Studies in the Literature, Art and
Patronage of Medieval England. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988.
Schoek, Richard J., and Jerome E. Taylor, eds. Chaucer Criticism, vols. 1 and 2. Notre
Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1960.
Spearing, A.C. Medieval Dream Poetry. London and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1976.
Stone, Brian. Chaucer. London: Penguin, 1987.
Strohm, Paul. Social Chaucer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989
(paperback edition 1994).
Winny, James, ed. The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1965.
Zacher, Christian K. Curiosity and Pilgrimage. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1976.
ELit 6-471E Chaucer
Essay assignment
The following topics are meant to be used as guidelines while reading the primary texts
and the critical bibliography (on Reserve in the library). Formulate your own essay title,
drawing on these general areas. It does not have to coincide precisely with any of the
topics below. Choose carefully the Chaucerian texts that you want to discuss.
Essay due: May 19th, 2014
1. Chaucer’s narrators
The position of the narrator in the Canterbury Tales is closely related to the effects of
both realism and irony that the narrative produces. The narrator of the General Prologue
also owes several of his characteristics to the dreamer-narrator of Chaucer’s earlier
dream-vision poems.
2. Chance and destiny in Chaucer
An issue that preoccupied Chaucer throughout his career was the question of the role of
fate in human affairs, its relationship to chance or accident, and its subordination to
divine Providence. Chaucer’s views, derived from The Consolation of Philosophy by
Boethius which he translated, can be seen to have influenced his handling of his
narratives in several crucial instances, in the Troilus as well as in the Canterbury Tales.
3. Chaucerian genres: romance
Consider Chaucer’s handling of the romance genre, concentrating on your own selection
of texts. Possible choices include Troilus and Criseyde, the Knight’s Tale, the
Franklin’s Tale, the Wife of Bath’s Tale; don’t forget the Tale of Sir Thopaz.
4. Chaucerian genres: fabliau
Consider Chaucer’s handling of this genre, based on your own selection from the
fabliaux in the Canterbury Tales (Miller’s Tale, Reeve’s Tale, Merchant’s Tale).
Possible aspects: style, plot structure, comic irony.
5. Chaucerian genres: didactic narrative
Choose for discussion among the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, the Prioress’s Tale, the Pardoner’s
Tale, the Clerk’s Tale. You would probably also want to consider the Parson’s Prologue
and Chaucer’s Retraction, and other passages indicating Chaucer’s religious beliefs.
6. Realism versus allegory in the Chaucerian character
Chaucerian characters such as the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner have been interpreted
by both readers and critics as realistic characters in psychological terms. Recent
criticism has been more sceptical of such a view. One alternative to psychological
realism can be found in the medieval tradition of allegorical characters, as in Chaucer’s
Clerk’s Tale, or in Everyman or Piers Plowman.
7. Chaucer and gentilesse
The issue of what constitutes true courtly behaviour, and the pros and cons of the courtly
value system, are questions which appear in various forms in several of Chaucer’s
works. You may want to consider the problem as posed in Troilus and Criseyde, in
some of the Canterbury Tales, the Book of the Duchess, and perhaps Chaucer’s lyric
poetry.
8. Chaucer and courtly love
Courtly love forms the topic of many of Chaucer’s works, but his attitude to this literary
convention remains in many respects ambivalent.
9. Chaucer’s women
To what extent - and in what ways - is Chaucer’s portrayal of women limited by the
conventions and beliefs of his time? Does he go beyond the medieval stereotypes in his
images of women (f.ex. The General Prologue, the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale,
the Miller’s Tale, the Franklin’s Tale, Troilus and Criseyde)?