When we trace the

When we trace the "Age of Chaucer" we will find that it is full of considerable number of religious, social and political events that profoundly influenced Chaucer himself and induced him to produce great masterpieces of Arts that contributed to English language at that time. Thus, it is very important to discuss the periods that England, at that time, went through and their intimate relations with the Age of Chaucer in order to understand fully the background of this age.

This course surveys the literature of late-medieval England, focusing on the so-called “Ricardian” era, corresponding to the reign of Richard II (1377-1399). In this relatively brief period, a number of outstanding poets and writers—notably Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, William Langland, and the anonymous author known as the “Gawain-poet,” among others—produced a remarkable variety of outstanding literary works in many genres. This output occurred amid broader traditions of medieval literary art, including religious and secular lyric, dream vision poems, the popular religious drama known as “mystery plays,” the writing of religious mystics and visionaries, the long tradition of chivalric romance leading to Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, historical chronicle, and the scurrilous comic tales known as fabliaux.

A main goal of the course will be to familiarize students with reading Middle English, the immediate forerunner of Modern English. Works in the standard London dialect of Middle English, including the poetry of Chaucer, will be read in annotated editions of the original texts. Some works in less familiar dialects, including the works of the Gawain-poet, will be read in Modern English translations.

The focus in the first half of the course will be on non-Chaucerian material in various genres. Throughout, the literature will be considered within its social and historical contexts, with special attention to representations of social order, and challenges to that order, notably the Great Rebellion of 1381. The second half of the course focuses on Chaucer’s poetry and particularly on the Canterbury Tales, with attention to the ways in which Chaucer echoes and responds to the literary styles and themes and social events of his time.

The prerequisites for the course are EN11 and EN12 or the equivalent and at least one 100-level English literature course, or the permission of the instructor.

Students are required to attend all class meetings. If you have to miss a class for a foreseeable obligation, inform me beforehand. I also expect all students to have fulfilled the assignment and to be prepared to participate in class discussion.

For most class meetings, students will write a response paper, about a page in length, on the assigned readings. These are not graded, but are required. Responses papers are intended both to give more practice in writing and to facilitate class discussion, so late response papers cannot be accepted. Students will collect their response papers in a folder throughout the semester. At the end of the course, students will review their portfolio of response papers and submit them along with a summative essay analyzing how their views of the materials and topics have evolved over the course of the semester.

Secondary critical sources are not required for the essay assignments in this course. On any assignment, however, you must fully cite any sources that you use. The source must appear in the list of works cited at the end of the essay, and each source must be cited on every occasion that you make use of its words or ideas. This is true if the source is your primary source (the text you are studying) or a critical source (an analysis of the work published elsewhere), and it is true if the source is printed or electronic, including internet sources. Follow the MLA style of in-text citation and lists of works cited described in A Pocket Style Manual, pp. 128-148. The failure to fully cite sources within your submitted work is a form of plagiarism. Plagiarism is the appropriation of ideas, data, work, or language of others and submitting them as one’s own to satisfy the requirements of a course. Plagiarism constitutes theft and deceit. Special care should be taken, when cutting and pasting materials or when paraphrasing, to cite sources correctly and to use quotation marks around exact words from source materials. Actions that result in plagiarism may be intentional or unintentional. Consequently, students must understand the concept of plagiarism. When reading, processing, or using materials from any source, appropriate documentation is always essential.

The consequences of plagiarism may range from failure on the assignment to failure for the course and university disciplinary action. Resources such as the library (ext. 2178) and the Writing Center (www.fairfield.edu/writingcenter) are available on campus to assist you in your academic endeavors. You are encouraged to take advantage of these resources.

There will be two critical essays, each about 6-7 pages long, due during the semester. The first essay will address the non-Chaucerian material. In the second essay will compare and contrast any Chaucerian text to any of the non-Chaucerian texts from the first half of the course. The final exam will cover material from the entire semester.

All submitted papers should follow the Modern Language Association (MLA) guidelines for formatting a paper. These guidelines can be found in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th ed., which is available in the Reference Section of the library and in the Writing Center. They are also summarized on pp. 119-154 of Diana Hacker’s Pocket Style Manual. When commenting on your essays, I will refer to Hacker on matters of format and style.

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales (mostly written in verse although some are in prose) are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return.

Following a long list of works written earlier in his career, including Troilus and Criseyde, House of Fame, and Parliament of Fowls, the Canterbury Tales was Chaucer's magnum opus. He uses the tales and the descriptions of its characters to paint an ironic and critical portrait of English society at the time, and particularly of the Church. Structurally, the collection resembles The Decameron, which Chaucer may have read during his first diplomatic mission to Italy in 1372.

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The question of whether The Canterbury Tales is finished has not yet been answered. The combined elements of Chaucer's quadri-lingual expertise in law, philosophy, and other subjects, the uncertainty of medieval English historical records, issues of manuscript transmission, and Chaucer's method of telling his stories through a multi-perspective prism of subjectivity make the "Tales" extremely difficult to interpret. There are 83 known manuscripts of the work from the late medieval and early Renaissance period, more than any other vernacular literary text with the exception of The Prick of Conscience. This is taken as evidence of the tales' popularity during the century after Chaucer's death.^[1] Fifty-five of these manuscripts are thought to have been complete at one time, while 28 are so fragmentary that it is difficult to ascertain whether they were copied individually or as part of a set.^[2] The Tales vary in both minor and major ways from manuscript to manuscript; many of the minor variations are due to copyists' errors, while others suggest that Chaucer added to and revised his work as it was being copied and (possibly) distributed. No official, unarguably complete version of the Tales exists and no consensus has been reached regarding the order in which Chaucer intended the stories to be placed.^[3][4]

Textual and manuscript clues have been adduced to support the two most popular methods of ordering the tales.Some scholarly editions divide the Tales into ten "fragments." The tales that comprise a fragment are closely related and contain internal indications of their order of presentation, usually with one character speaking to and then stepping aside for another character. Between fragments, however, the connection is less obvious. Consequently, there are several possible tales orders, the most popular of which is as follows:^[

An alternative ordering (seen in an early manuscript containing the Canterbury Tales, the early-fifteenth century Harley MS. 7334) places Fragment VIII before VI. However, the order indicated above follows that of some other early manuscripts, most notably the Ellesmere Manuscript. Fragments I and II almost always follow each other, as do VI and VII, IX and X in the oldest manuscripts. Fragments IV and V, by contrast are located in varying locations from manuscript to manuscript. Victorians would frequently move Fragment VII(B²) to follow Fragment II(B¹), which was the order used by Walter William Skeat whose edition Chaucer: Complete Works was used by Oxford University Press for most of the twentieth century, but this order is no longer followed and has no justification.^[3] Even the earliest surviving manuscripts are not Chaucer's originals, the oldest being MS Peniarth 392 D (called "Hengwrt"), compiled by a scribe shortly after Chaucer's death. The scribe uses the order shown above, though he does not seem to have had a full collection of Chaucer's tales, so parts are missing. The most beautiful of the manuscripts of the tales is the Ellesmere Manuscript, and many editors have followed the order of the Ellesmere over the centuries, even down to the present day.^[5][6] The first version of the Canterbury Tales to be published in print was William Caxton's 1478 edition. Since this print edition was created from a now-lost manuscript, it is counted as among the 83 manuscripts

The variety of Chaucer's tales shows the breadth of his skill and his familiarity with countless rhetorical forms and linguistic styles. Medieval schools of rhetoric at the time encouraged such diversity, dividing literature (as Virgil suggests) into high, middle, and low styles as measured by the density of rhetorical forms and vocabulary. Another popular method of division came from St. Augustine, who focused more on audience response and less on subject matter (a Virgilian concern). Augustine divided literature into "majestic persuades", "temperate pleases", and "subdued teaches". Writers were encouraged to write in a way that kept in mind the speaker, subject, audience, purpose, manner, and occasion. Chaucer moves freely between all of these styles, showing favoritism to none. He not only considers the readers of his work as an audience, but the other pilgrims within the story as well, creating a multi-layered rhetorical puzzle of ambiguities. Chaucer's work thus far surpasses the ability of any single medieval theory to uncover.^[24]

With this Chaucer avoids targeting any specific audience or social class of readers, focusing instead on the characters of the story and writing their tales with a skill proportional to their social status and learning. However, even the lowest characters, such as the Miller, show surprising rhetorical ability, although their subject matter is more lowbrow. Vocabulary also plays an important part, as those of the higher classes refer to a woman as a "lady", while the lower classes use the word "wenche", with no exceptions. At times the same word will mean entirely different things between classes. The word "pitee", for example, is a noble concept to the upper classes, while in the Merchant's Tale it refers to sexual intercourse. Again, however, tales such as the Nun's Priest's Tale show surprising skill with words among the lower classes of the group, while the Knight's Tale is at times extremely simple.^[25]

Chaucer uses the same meter throughout almost all of his tales, with the exception of Sir Thopas and his prose tales. It is a decasyllable line, probably borrowed from French and Italian forms, with riding rhyme and, occasionally, a caesura in the middle of a line. His meter would later develop into the heroic meter of the 15th and 16th centuries and is an ancestor of iambic pentameter. He avoids allowing couplets to become too prominent in the poem, and four of the tales (the Man of Law's, Clerk's, Prioress', and Second Nun's) use rhyme royal.

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 846