ENGLISH 4260: CHAUCER FALL 2016

CHAUCER IMITATION ASSIGNMENT

Choose one of the options below. The due date is Tuesday, November 29.

1. Portrait Imitation

Write a portrait to be inserted into the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Imitate as closely as you can Chaucer’s techniques of description, verbal form and style, and point of view. Your portrait may (and indeed, should) be in Modern English, but it must be in rhymed pentameter couplets, and at least twenty-four lines long.

You should choose a character from one of the modern “estates,” and decide at the start whether your portrait will be satirical, like those of the Monk or the Prioresse, or straightforward, like that of the Parson. (Note: satirical is more fun and interesting.) Note that estates associated with both moral and physical stereotypes will probably work best.

You should probably begin by writing a brief prose sketch of your character, listing some details of physical appearance, occupational habits, and personal disposition, before starting to write the portrait in verse. We’ll schedule a pair of short workshops in November so you can tinker with your portrait in class.

When you have finished, add to your text a 1-2 page explanation what is particularly “Chaucerian” about your portrait.

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2. Catalogue Imitation

Write three rhyme royal stanzas in imitation of the poetic catalogues in the Parliament of Fowls (176-182; 337-364), about a category of your choosing—breakfast cereals, TV sitcoms, fish, athletic shoe brands, root vegetables, hip-hop artists, beers of the world, etc. The verse should be in modern English iambic pentameter, and each stanza should follow the ababbcc scheme of the Parliament.

You’ll want to look closely at Chaucer’s stanzas and the way they characterize the individual items they catalogue—some feature fewer birds with full clauses describing them, telling a story about their behavior, while others include more species, modified by shorter descriptive phrases. Where are the pauses and stops and punctuation that keep the syntax working smoothly?

You’ll want to pick a category with plenty of individual members that are easy to differentiate from one another (Chaucer fits as many as 26 birds into three stanzas’ worth of catalogue). Start with a list, then add distinguishing details, before working on the verse—that would be my advice.

No additional essay is required for this assignment, which means that making your verse as perfect as possible is the goal!