ENGLISH 4260: CHAUCER FALL 2016

FIRST ESSAY ASSIGNMENT

Essays on one of the topics below should be double-spaced (one-inch margins/12-point type) and five to six pages (±1500 words) in length. Be sure to refer as helpfully and specifically as possible to the texts upon which you're basing your argument--and be sure to have an argument or thesis. Your essay should have an original title, and it should not use the word “relatable.” Essays are due by midnight on Thursday September 22; electronic submissions only (fgrady@umsl.edu).

1. Design your own topic, of suitable specificity and sophistication, about something that interests you in The Book of the Duchess, The Parliament of Fowls, or the portion of the Canterbury Tales we’ve read so far. A brief consultation with the instructor is required; talking with one another is recommended, too, and I’d like to receive a paragraph or email describing your topic by Monday, September 19.

2. One critical preoccupation concerning the Parliament of Fowls has traditionally been its thematic integrity, and whether it can be said to have any. What holds the Parliament of Fowls together thematically? Do its parts connect logically, or according to some other principle of organization—or not at all? Is there some aspect of structure or form or tone that unifies the poem, in the absence of any consistent thematic development—or is there actually a theme consistently developed? (Translation: What is the Parliament of Fowls really about?)

3. The Parliament of Fowls has a pretty extensive soundtrack: the harmony of the spheres, the music in the garden, the sighs in the temple, the noises of the birds, etc. Write an essay about the theme of sound/noise/music in the Parliament.

4. Starting with the role of the tercelet in the Parliament of Fowls, write an essay in which you discuss the way in which feminine desire gets represented--if it does--in Chaucer's work. What do women (and women birds) want--if they want anything? And what effect does acknowledging (or not acknowledging) their desires have on things [narratives, best-laid plans, the status quo, masculine intentions]? Redefine the terms of this question in any way you need to in order to produce an essay about the status of the female characters in what we've read so far of Chaucer’s poetry (at this point, White, the tercelet, Emelye).

5. Survey the portraits of the religious folk described in the General Prologue (Prioresse, Monk, Friar, Clerk, Parson, Summoner, Pardoner) and, knowing that later developments may make you want to change your mind, hazard some opinions about the nature of Chaucerian anticlericalism.

6. The narrator of the Knight’s Tale is addicted to the occupatio, which in one sense is not surprising, given its much longer source in Boccaccio’s Teseida. Is his use of the device thematically consistent? That is, does the Knight tend to use the occupatio to condense or skip over a specific kind of material—and if so, what does that habit tell us about his attitude or his angle towards his material?

7. Critics have described how Thebes and its citizens always represent a principle of disorder in Chaucer’s poetry, a theme to which he repeatedly returns. With the contrast of Thebes and Athens in mind, write an essay about order and disorder in the Knight’s Tale.

8. The Knight’s Tale explicitly and successfully celebrates healing power of chivalric ritual and its capacity to bring order to a world beset by chaotic and sometimes malign forces. Doesn’t it?

9. Theseus in the Knight’s Tale: principled spokesman for the chivalric life in his efforts to bring order to a chaotic world, or crypto-fascist control freak devoted to conquest?

10. Hippolyta and Emelye are Amazons, or so we’re told, hardy participants in “the grete bataille for the nones / Bitwixen Atthenes and Amazones.” What in the world happens to them?