ENGLISH 4620: CHAUCER SECOND ESSAY ASSIGNMENT

GRADY SPRING 2013

Essays should take up one of the topics below (double-spaced/one-inch margins/12-point type) and be five to six pages (±1600 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 MONDAY, MARCH 18; electronic submissions are strongly preferred (fgrady@umsl.edu)

1. Design your own topic, of suitable specificity and sophistication, about something that interests you in the Canterbury Tales we've read. A brief consultation with the instructor is required for this option; talking with one another is recommended, too, and I’d like to receive a paragraph or email describing your topic by Wednesday, March 13.

2. Write an essay about the women we've encountered so far in the Tales (remembering that one of them, the Wife of Bath, is a pilgrim rather than a character in a tale). Was Chaucer really, as the 15th-century Scottish Chaucerian Gavin Douglas claimed, “evir (God wait) all womanis frend”? Do women's roles, and Chaucer's depiction of them, tend to vary from genre to genre, or can you construct a consistent picture of his attitude about gender issues? What exactly are the "gender issues" in the Tales so far? [note: these questions are designed to stimulate your thinking, not to take the place of the thesis you might develop, and not to serve as the structuring principle of an essay.]

3. Here's an alternate way of looking at gender issues in the Canterbury Tales: is it possible to describe what Chaucer thinks of men?

4. Reread John Gower's "Tale of Florent" from his Confessio Amantis (http://www.courses.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/gower/gow-flor.html). Then write an essay comparing the ways that Chaucer and his friend and fellow poet Gower treat the "loathly lady" tale. (NB: Compare-and-contrast topics need a thesis too!)

5. John Gower's "Tale of Constance" from his Confessio Amantis (available via this link: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/gower/gow-cons.html) is one of the major sources for Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale. Write an essay comparing the ways that Chaucer and his friend and fellow poet Gower deal with the genre of the hagiographical romance. (NB: Compare-and-contrast topics need a thesis too!)

6. The Canterbury Tales may be fragmentary and incomplete, but the fragments themselves often have a certain thematic unity. Write an essay about the common themes, characters, plot elements, images, and other devices—some of them, anyway--that help to unify Fragment I (Prologue, Knight, Miller, and Reeve).

7. Another version of #7: The good feeling and fellowship that characterizes the pilgrims at the end of the General Prologue seems to vanish pretty quickly once the tale-telling contest begins--the Miller at once tries to "quite" the Knight's Tale, and is in return the victim of the Reeve's "quiting." Discuss the ways (structural, verbal, thematic) in which the Reeve's Tale responds to the Miller's Tale, and comment on the process of "quiting" as it manifests itself in the Fragment I of the Tales.

8. The Wife of Bath pays lot of attention to bodies, both women's and men's, in her Prologue and Tale. Why is that? Discuss the importance of the body--its various functions, the natural and unnatural changes it can undergo--as a theme in her performance.

9. Discuss the Wife of Bath’s by comparing at least two (if you’re a graduate student, at least three) of the critical essays on the Wife posted on MyGateway (they’re in the March 23 Course Documents folder).

10. "For patriarchy's scandalous secret...is that it had to be obsessively vindicated--often in grotesque or brutal ways, as in witch-hunting or wife beating...Patriarchy had to deal in cautionary tales and mete out surplus repression, because it was riddled with inner anxieties. And all this...stemmed from the fact that it was far from obviously 'natural'..." Comment on these sentiments (borrowed, I should admit, from a TLS review of a book about 18th-century life) with reference to The Canterbury Tales.

11. A number of critical remarks about the Man of Law’s Tale can be found here: http://www.umsl.edu/~gradyf/chaucer/MLT%20critics.htm. If one of them ignites your critical faculties, communicate with me about how to turn the encounter into an arguable essay topic.