ENGLISH 4620: CHAUCER SHORT
ESSAY ASSIGNMENT
GRADY SPRING
2018
Essays on one of the topics below should be double-spaced
(one-inch margins/12-point type) and up to 1000 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 on Friday, February; electronic submissions to my email are preferred (fgrady@umsl.edu)
1. Design your own topic, of suitable
specificity and sophistication, about something that interests you in 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, February 19.
2.
Surveying 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.
3. Trace
the application one of these words in the General Prologue: worthy / curteis-curteisye / noble.
4. 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?
5. (a)
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?
(b) 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?
6. (a)
Critics have described how Thebes and its citizens—like Arcite
and Palamon-- 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.
(b) Write a short essay describing how
certain kinds of repetition structure
the Knight’s Tale.
7. 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?
In other words, how does the Knight’s
Tale address matters of gender?