ENGLISH 201: CHAUCER’S CANTERBURY TALES FOURTH ESSAY
ASSIGNMENT
GRADY SPRING
2015
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 “downfall.” Essays are due on TUESDAY, JUNE 2 (10 PM); 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 Friday, May 29.
2. What is the place of the Parson's Prologue and Tale in the Canterbury Tales?
Are the Parson's remarks anomalous,
given what has come before, or are they consistent with the Tales so far? Does he impose (or try to impose) a new and
different perspective on the pilgrimage and the contest, or do his remarks make
an appropriate conslusion?
3. Use one of the critical remarks on
the Pardoner’s Tale [http://www.umsl.edu/~gradyf/chaucer/pardonercritics.htm],
Nun’s Priest’s Tale [http://www.umsl.edu/~gradyf/chaucer/npt%20critics.htm]
or Parson’s Tale [http://www.umsl.edu/~gradyf/chaucer/parson&critics.htm
] as an essay prompt (but let me know in advance which one you’ve chosen).
4. Write an essay about the
interruptions that take place in the course of the storytelling contest. Who gets to interrupt, why do they do it, and
are there different kinds of interruption (e.g., authorized and unauthorized)?
Can interruptions have non-dramatic or extra-dramatic significance (i.e.,
explanations that go beyond one pilgrim being mad at another)?
5.
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, or other devices that help to
unify Fragment VII (Shipman through Nun’s Priest).
(a) Here’s a possibility: many tales
and links in the fragment seem to be concerned with masculinity and virility
and male reputation.
6.
“Werk al by conseil, and thou shalt nat rewe,” says Nicholas to John in the Miller’s Tale—in a scene in which he is clearly trying to put one
over on the poor old man. Discuss the fictions of advice and
scenes of advising we’ve seen in the Tales,
in the Wife of Bath’s Tale, the Clerk’s Tale, and elsewhere (Knight? Summoner?
Merchant? Melibee? Nun’s
Priest?). Does Chaucer seem to
have a particular “take” on the giving (and receiving) of counsel?
7. “…Chaucer
uses food, though diversely in diverse parts of The Canterbury Tales, as a unifying
shorthand for the festive elements in his poem . . . . In The Canterbury Tales, the
social production and consumption of food provides an alternative, circular,
and festive ethos which is in dialogic relation with the linear,
inner-directed, ascetic dynamics of pilgrimage.” Comment on this claim (drawn from a recebtly essay on the Canterbury
Tales).
8. What function do children perform in Chaucer's
poetry? (and who counts as a child, exactly?)