Fall 2013, 350:533 Chaucer (graduate)
Professor Carol F. Heffernan,
E-mail: cfheff@andromeda.rutgers.edu
Office: Room 524 Hill Hall
Office Hours: Thurs. 4:00 to 5:20 p.m. & Appt.
Required Texts:
The Canterbury Tales (Complete). Ed. Larry Benson. Boston: HoughtonMifflin.
Boccaccio. The Decameron. Trans. G. H. Mcwilliam. New York: Penguin
Classics.
These books have been ordered through the Rutgers University Bookstore
(Bradley Hall)
Course Description:
The course will focus on “intertextuality”: the relationship between the tales of
Canterbury themselves and their dialogue with texts outside of Chaucer, especially
analogues in Boccaccio’s Decameron (the earlier great fourteenth-century tale collection).
The textual will be shown to engage the contextual, a culture’s political, economic,
religious, and social concerns, including anxieties about class, gender, and sexuality.
Research Paper:
A paper of approximately 20-25 pages in length. Topic to be selected after
discussion with the instructor. In some cases, the paper will grow out of topics selected
for oral reports. The grade on the research paper will account for 45% of the final
grade.
Oral Presentation:
20-25 minutes long. Topics will be chosen from a list of subjects to be distributed
at the beginning of the course. Specific oral reports will be scheduled for meetings
where they will be most helpful to class discussions of assigned readings. The grade on
the oral presentation will account for 30% of the final grade.
Readings assignments:
All tales should be read ahead of the day assigned together with their prologues
and links. Class discussions and student writing will take the required Middle English
text as their point of reference. Participation in class discussions will account for 25%
of the final grade.
Course Objective: to understand what Donald Howard means when he writes,
“When we read him [Chaucer] he speaks to us across the gulf that divides medieval
from modern, beckons us into his inner world, makes us want to think his thoughts
and feel his feelings even as he masks these behind multiple ironies and leaves us
guessing at them.”
MEETINGS
9/5
Introduction
9/12
The Canterbury Tales
Fragment I (A)
9/19
General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales
oral report #1: discussion of Robert Raymo’s “The General Prologue”
in Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales, ed. Robert Correale
with Mary Hamel, vol. 2 (2005)
9/26
General Prologue continued
oral report #2: Jill Mann’s Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire
10/3
Knight’s Tale
oral report #3: Barbara Nolan’s Chaucer and the Tradition of the “Roman
Antique”
10/10
Miller’s Tale, Reeve’s Tale, Cook’s Tale
Cp. Decameron 9, 6
oral report #4: Fabliau
Fragment II (B)
10/17
Man of Law’s Tale
oral report #5: discussion of ch. 7 of V. A. Kolve’s Chaucer and
the Imagery of Narrative (a symbolic reading of the tale)
Fragment III (D)
10/24
Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale
oral report #6: Lee Patterson’s “ ‘Experience woot well it is noght so’:
Marriage and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Wife of Bath’s
Prologue and Tale” (in The Wife of Bath, ed. Peter G. Beidler [Bedford
Books])
10/31
Friar’s Tale, Summoner’s Tale
Fragment IV (E)
11/7
Clerk’s Tale
Cp. Decameron 10, 10
11/14
The Merchant’s Tale
oral report #7: discussion of Iris Origo’s The Merchant of Prato
Fragment V (F)
11/21
Squire’s Tale, Franklin’s Tale
oral report #8: discussion of one chapter of Lee Patterson’s
Negotiating the Past
Fragment VI (C)
11/26
Thursday classes. Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale
Read Decameron 6, 10 concerning Fra Cipolla
Thanksgiving Recess Thurs. Nov. 28-Sun. Dec. 1
12/5
Fragment VII
Parson’s Prologue, Retraction
Research Papers Due