ENGL 4800: HONORS CHAUCER
Dr. Nicole Smith
This course serves up the most well-known text of Chaucer’s canon, The Canterbury Tales. The meal is copious and not for the faint of heart: we will read them all, and we will do so in Middle English. Because the Honors College encourages student research, this course is writing and research intensive. You will learn the arts of close reading; you will investigate questions of translation; you will become familiar with manuscript culture and paleography; you will be required to perform a “literature review” of a particular Tale. These practices build upon those you have learned in HNRS 1500, Introduction to Research, and extend your understanding of research across the disciplines to the specific methods we used in English literary criticism. You will thus become familiar with the Middle English poetry of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, critical responses to it, and you will have produced a 5-7 page scholarly paper by the end of he semester. Supplemental food for thought includes texts that serve as sources or analogues to the Tales, terms of prosody, and lessons in literary analysis, both verbal and written.
Format is Mediterranean table theater: coming to class means being prepared to think with and against the texts, with and against each other. Attendance is mandatory, under penalty of disinheritance.
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: The Canterbury Tales bring to the table figures of passion, over-the-top narrativized vocalizations, and prolonged engagements with sin and salvation. Whether their protagonists are social-climbing adulterous wives, perverted priests, or scheming sadists plotting revenge, they take no prisoners. So I say, come willing and able to meet them in kind, gregariously, with full-bore intelligence; or come not at all.
THE SPECIFICS:
Regular, prompt attendance and participation (10%)
Translation/reading comprehension quizzes (10%)
2 short papers (3-5pp., typed) (40%)
1 long paper (5-7pp., typed) (40%)
Required texts:
The Canterbury Tales, ed. Larry D. Benson (CT)
Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds, Robert P. Miller (CSB)
Oxford Guides to Chaucer, Helen Cooper
Papers: Close reading is a fundamental part of literary analysis. In this class you will develop your explication skills (those of explicit paraphrase) and analyze your explication using terms of prosody and literary analysis. In other words, your papers will examine literary tropes and techniques at work in an excerpt of poetry and subsequently draw conclusions about the effects these tropes have on the text itself. Do not be deceived by the apparent brevity of the papers. Essays of comprehensive and thoughtful literary analysis are, at best, not easy. You will aim for quality in these pages, rather than quantity. I attach assignments for the first two papers. Paper three will be a revision of paper two and asks the student to broaden her argument to include an additional Tale.
Plagiarism: The UNT Undergraduate Catalogue notes that “the term ‘plagiarism’ includes, but is not limited to, the use, by paraphrase or direct quotation, of the published or unpublished work of another person without full and clear acknowledgement. It also includes the unacknowledged use of materials prepared by another person or agency engaged in the selling of term papers or other academic materials.” Plagiarized work (papers or exams) will receive an F.
Students with disabilities: In accordance with the terms and spirit of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504, Rehabilitation Act, the instructor will cooperate with the Office of Disability Accommodation to make reasonable accommodations for qualified students with disabilities. If you have a disability for which you will require accommodation, you must advise me of your needs in writing no later than the end of the second week of class.
Phew! An over-written course description, yes, but one that is happily symptomatic of what it's like to get involved with reading (slowly, slowly, and much aloud, to hear tone and see drama) and thinking (what's actually going on here? how are we supposed to find out? why should I bloody care?) at the highest level.
CALENDAR
Week 1Introduction to the course
The General Prologue
Week 2“Introduction,” CT, pp. xiii-xxxviii
Fragment I,CT, pp. 19-48
The Knight’s Tale
CSB, pp. 167-68, 180-86: Geoffroi de Charny, “The Making of a Knight”;
Ramon Lull, “The Origins and Purpose of Chivalry” and “The Office of Knighthood”
Week 3PART I of PAPER I DUE
Fragment I (cont.), CT, pp. 48-68
Miller’s Prologue and Tale; Reeve’s Prologue and Tale; Cook’s Prologue
and Tale
CSB, pp. 66-68, 271-73: Geoffrey of Vinsauf, “Examples of Effictio” and
“Modes of Love”
Week 4PART II of PAPER I DUE
Fragment II,CT, pp. 69-86
Man of Law’s Introduction, Prologue, Tale, Epilogue
CSB, pp. 391-96: “The Good Woman in Scripture”
Week 5PART III of PAPER I DUE
Fragment III,CT, pp. 87-118
Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale; Friar’s Prologue and Tale;
Summoner’s Prologue and Tale
CSB, pp. 254-68, 399-402, 415-36: “The Anti-feminist Tradition”;
Jerome, “Epistle Against Jovinian”; Richard FitzRalph, “Excerpt from
Defense of the Curates”; Richard de Bury, “Excerpt from Philobolon”;
John Gower, “Excerpt from Vox Clamantis”
Week 6Fragment IV,CT, pp. 119-50
Clerk’s Prologue and Tale; Merchant’s Prologue, Tale, Epilogue
CSB, pp. 137-52, 385-87, 452-66: Petrarch,“Story of Griselda”;
Bartholomaeus Anglicus, “Husband and Wife”; Jean de Meun, “The
Jealous Husband”
Week 7PART I of PAPER II DUE
Paleography Workshop in Rare Book Room
Week 8Fragment V, CT, pp. 151-71
Squire’s Introduction and Tale; Franklin’s Prologue and Tale
CSB, pp. 121-35: Boccaccio, “Question of Menendon”
Week 9PART II of PAPER II Due
Fragments VI and VII, CT, pp. 172-91
Physician’s Tale; Pardoner’s Introduction, Prologue, Tale; Shipman’s Tale
CSB, pp. 82-85: Petrarch, “On the Nature of Poetry”
Week 10Fragment VII (cont.) and Fragment VIII, CT, pp. 191-221
Prioress’s Prologue and Tale; Second Nun’s Prologue and Tale
CSB, pp. 113-20:: Jacobus de Voraigne, “Life of Saint Cecilia”
Week 11Fragment VII (cont.),
Prologue and Tale of Sir Thopas; Tale of Melibee
CSB, pp. 77-81: Dante, “From the Convivio and the Letter to Can Grande”
Week 12PART III of PAPER II Due
Fragments VII (cont.) and VIII,CT, pp. 222-51
The Monk’s Prologue and Tale
CSB, pp. xvi, 44-52, Figure I, “Fortune’s Wheel”; Macrobius, “From the
Commentary on the Dream of Scipio”;
Week 13Fragment VIII (cont.)
Nun’s Priest’s Prologue, Tale, and Epilogue
Week 14Fragment VIII (cont.) and IX
Canon Yeoman’s Prologue and Tale; Manciple’s Prologue and Tale
Week 15PAPER III Due
Fragment X,CT, pp. 269-310