chaucer 533 syllabus

7/23/2019 Chaucer 533 Syllabus

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Fall 2013, 350:533 Chaucer (graduate)

Professor Carol F. Heffernan, E-mail: [email protected]: Room 524 Hill Hall Office Hours: Thurs. 4:00 to 5:20 p.m. & Appt.

Required Texts:

The Canterbury Tales (Complete). Ed. Larry Benson. Boston: Houghton-

Mifflin.

Boccaccio. The Decameron. Trans. G. H. Mcwilliam. New York: Penguin

Classics.

These books have been ordered through the Rutgers University Bookstore

(Bradley Hall)

Course Description:

The course will focus on “intertextuality”: the relationship between the tales of

Canterbury themselves and their dialogue with texts outside of Chaucer, especially

analogues in Boccaccio’sDecameron (the earlier great fourteenth-century tale collection).

The textual will be shown to engage the contextual, a culture’s political, economic,religious, and social concerns, including anxieties about class, gender, and sexuality.

Research Paper:

A paper of approximately 20-25 pages in length. Topic to be selected after

discussion with the instructor. In some cases, the paper will grow out of topics selected

for oral reports.The grade on the research paper will account for 45% of the final

grade.

Oral Presentation:

20-25 minutes long. Topics will be chosen from a list of subjects to be distributed

at the beginning of the course. Specific oral reports will be scheduled for meetings



where they will be most helpful to class discussions of assigned readings.The grade

on the oral presentation will account for 30% of the final grade. Readings assignments:

All tales should be read ahead of the day assigned together with their prologues

and links. Class discussions and student writing will take the required Middle English

text as their point of reference.Participation in class discussions will account for 25%

of the final grade.

Course Objective: to understand what Donald Howard means when he writes,

“When we read him [Chaucer] he speaks to us across the gulf that divides medieval

from modern, beckons us into his inner world, makes us want to think his thoughts

and feel his feelings even as he masks these behind multiple ironies and leaves us

guessing at them.”

MEETINGS

9/5 Introduction

9/12 The Canterbury Tales

Fragment I (A)

9/19 General Prologue ofThe Canterbury Tales

oral report #1: discussion of Robert Raymo’s “The General Prologue”

inSources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales,ed. Robert Correale with

Mary Hamel, vol. 2 (2005)

9/26 General Prologue continued

oral report #2: Jill Mann’sChaucer and Medieval Estates Satire

10/3 Knight’s Tale

oral report #3: Barbara Nolan’sChaucer and the Tradition of the “Roman

Antique”



10/10 Miller’s Tale, Reeve’s Tale, Cook’s Tale Cp.Decameron 9, 6

oral report #4: Fabliau

Fragment II (B)

10/17 Man of Law’s Tale

oral report #5: discussion of ch. 7 of V. A. Kolve’sChaucer and

the Imagery of Narrative(a symbolic reading of the tale)

Fragment III (D)

10/24 Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale

oral report #6: Lee Patterson’s “ ‘Experience woot well it is noght so’:

Marriage and the Pursuit of Happiness in theWife of Bath’s

Prologue and Tale” (inThe Wife of Bath, ed. Peter G. Beidler [Bedford

Books])

10/31 Friar’s Tale, Summoner’s Tale

Fragment IV (E)

11/7 Clerk’s Tale

Cp.Decameron 10, 10

11/14 The Merchant’s Tale

oral report #7: discussion of Iris Origo’sThe Merchant of Prato

Fragment V (F)

11/21 Squire’s Tale, Franklin’s Tale



oral report #8: discussion of one chapter of Lee Patterson’s

Negotiating the Past

Fragment VI (C)

11/26 Thursday classes.Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale

ReadDecameron 6, 10concerning Fra Cipolla

Thanksgiving Recess Thurs. Nov. 28-Sun. Dec. 1

12/5 Fragment VII

Parson’s Prologue, Retraction

Research Papers Due

chaucer 533 syllabus

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