Assignments and tentative class schedule

Note: We will read the General Prologue closely in class; all other assigned tales should be read in advance of class discussion. Although you must read all the assigned tales in full, not all will be given equal class attention. Supplementary works are indicated. Those marked with an asterisk (*) are required reading.  The syllabus may be revised as needed.

Week 1: Introduction to Chaucer's language and to the course; General Prologue.

*The English Language in the 14th Century (Harvard Chaucer Page)

*Chaucer's life (Harvard Chaucer Page)

"Medieval Themes and Topics: Some Interesting and Essential Stuff" (Professor Michael Hanly, Washington State University)

Some important events in the 14th century

Week 2: General Prologue.

*E.Talbot Donaldson, "Chaucer the Pilgrim" (1970) (Harvard Chaucer Page)

*Mann, "Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: Introduction" (handout).

The Knight, Ellesmere MS (Luminarium)

Week 3: Knight's Tale

*Boethius, "The Consolation of Philosophy" (Harvard Chaucer Page)

Charles Muscatine, "The Knight's Tale" (1957) (Harvard Chaucer Page) [standard new critical reading]

David Aers, "Imagination, Order and Ideology: The Knight's Tale" (1980) (Harvard Chaucer Page) [new historicist-Marxist reading]

Susan Crane, "Medieval Romance and Feminine Difference in the Knight's Tale,"   (1990)  (Harvard Chaucer Page) [feminist reading]

The Cook (Ellesmere MS)

Week 4: Miller's Prologue and Tale; Reeve's Prologue and Tale; Cook's Prologue and Tale.

*Robert W. Hanning, "Telling the Private Parts: 'Pryvetee' and Poetry in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales" (1992) (handout)

A continuation of the Cook's Tale (TEAMS)

Week 5: Man of Law's Introduction, Prologue and Tale; Wife of Bath's Prologue

Susan Schibanoff, "Worlds Apart: Orientalism, Antifeminism, and Heresy in Chaucer's 'Man of Law's Tale,'"  (1995) (Exemplaria)

Elizabeth Robertson, "The 'Elvyssh' Power of Constance: Christian Feminism in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Man of Law's Tale" (handout)

Week 6: Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale (cont).

  The Wife of Bath, Ellesmere MS (Huntington Library)

*Carolyn Dinshaw, "'Glose/bele chose': The Wife of Bath and her Glossators" (1989) (handout).[feminist-Lacanian reading]

Andrew Sprung, "'If it youre wille be': Coercion and Compliance in Chaucer's Clerk's Tale" (1995) (handout)

Week 9: Merchant’s Tale (cont.); Squire’s Introduction; Epilogue; Franklin's Prologue and Tale.

Joan Haahr, "Chaucer's 'Marriage Group Revisited: The Wife of Bath and Merchant in Debate" (1990) (handout).

*Morton Bloomfield, "The Franklin's Tale: A Story of Unanswered Questions" (1982) (handout)

The Pardoner, Ellesmere MS 

*H. Marshall Leicester, "'Synne Horrible': The Pardoner's Exegesis of his Tale, and Chaucer's" (1982) (handout).

Monica McAlpine, "The Pardoner's Homosexuality and How It Matters."  (1980) (Harvard Chaucer Page)

Philip S. Alexander, Madame Eglentyne, Geoffrey Chaucer and the Problem of Medieval Anti-Semitism (Harvard Chaucer Page)

The Blood Libel: "Beyond the Pale: Christian Images of Jews in the Middle Ages"

*Morton W. Bloomfield, "The Wisdom of the Nun's Priest's Tale" (1979) (handout)

Week 13: Manciple's Prologue and Tale; Parson's Prologue and Tale [75-204; skim "the seven sins," 950- 2720; 3078-3146]; Chaucer's "Retraction."

*Donald Howard, "The Parson" (1978) (handout)

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