English 5250: Studies in
Middle English Literature
Secondary Criticism
Schedule
Please summarize the
assigned articles using this template.
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February 6 Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women (Prologue and
selected tales)
Strohm, “
Dinshaw,
“’The naked text in English to declare:’ The Legend of Good Women,” from Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics
Simpson, “Ethics and Interpretation: Reading Wills in
Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women”
1. ____
2. ____Eric Sargent
3. ____
_________________________________
February 20 Gower, Confessio Amantis (Prologue and Book I)
R.F.
Yeager, “English, Latin, and the Text as ‘Other’: The Page as Sign in the Work
of John Gower”
Wetherbee, “Classical and Boethian Tradition in the Confessio Amantis,” from A Companion
to Gower
Grady,
“Gower’s Boat, Richard’s Barge, and the True Story of the Confessio Amantis: Text
and Gloss”(TSLL 44.1, 2002)
1. ____
2. ____Priscilla Johnson
3. ____
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February 27 Chaucer, General
Prologue to the
Strohm, “The King’s Affinity,” from Social Chaucer
Carlson, “Work,” from Chaucer’s
Jobs
Wallace, “The General
Prologue and the Anatomy of
Associational Form,” from Chaucerian
Polity
1. ____Jennie Dodson
2. ____Eric Sargent
3. ____
________________________________
March 6 Langland, Piers
Plowman (Prologue-Passus 6)
Middleton, “The Audience and Public
of Piers Plowman””
Justice, “The Genres of Piers Plowman”
Trigg, “The
Traffic in Medieval Women: Alice Perrers, Feminist Criticism, and Piers Plowman”
1. _____
2. _____
3.
_________________________________
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March 13 Piers
Plowman (Passus 7-9, 13-14)
Middleton, “Narration and the Invention
of Experience in Piers Plowman”
Aers, “Piers Plowman: Poverty, Work and Community”
Simpson, “Spirituality and Economics
in Passus 1-7 of the B-Text”
1. _____
2. _____Priscilla Johnson
3. _____
_________________________________
March 20 Chaucer, Knight/Miller/Reeve
Fowler, “Chaucer’s Hard Cases”
Muscatine,
"Form, Texture, and Meaning in Chaucer's Knight's Tale" (PMLA
65.5, 1950)
1. _____Jennie Dodson
2. _____
3. _____Eric Sargent
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April 10 Chaucer, Fragment III (Wife of Bath/Friar/Summoner); Gower, “Tale of Florent”
Fradenburg, “The Wife of Bath’s Passing
Fancy,” SAC 8 (1986) 31-58.
Crane, “Alison’s Incapacity
and Poetic Instability in the Wife of Bath’s Tale,” PMLA 102 (1987)
1. _____
2. _____
3. _____Priscilla Johnson
_________________________________
April 17 Chaucer, Clerk’s
Tale/Franklin’s Tale
Wallace, “’Whan
She Translated Was’: A Chaucerian Critique of the
Dinshaw, “Griselda Translated,” from
Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics
Charnes, “’This Werk Unresonable’: Narrative
Frustration and Generic Redistribution in Chaucer’s
Franklin’s Tale”
1. ____
2. ____
3.
_________________________________
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April 24 Gower, Confessio
Amantis (Book 8); Langland, Piers
Plowman (Passus 20)
Larry Scanlon, “The Riddle of Incest: John Gower and
Medieval Sexuality”
Diane Watt, “Oedipus, Apollonius, and Richard II: Sex and
Politics in Book 8 of Gower’s Confessio Amantis,” SAC 24 (2002): 181-208
1. _____Jennie Dodson
2. _____
3.
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