English 4260: Chaucer        Spring 2013         Final Exam Preview

I. Seven or eight of the following wiki terms will appear on the exam, where you will be asked to identify five or six of them in a sentence or two, and to indicate their relevance to the Chaucer texts we’ve studied. (±20%)

4th Lateran Council (1215)

Adversus Jovinianum

Cecily Champain

De miseria condicionis humane

demande d’amour

Ellesmere MS

estates satire

Expusion of the Jews (1290)

Fürstenspiegel

hagiography

Hengwrt MS

irresponsibility topos

John Gower

occupatio

Petrarch

Rash promise

St. Hugh of Lincoln

Teseida

II. There will be a selection of passages drawn from our reading, five or six of which you will be asked to identify (by tale, speaker, situation) and comment upon (significance). The may be drawn from the General Prologue and the tales and prologues of the Knight, Miller, Man of Law, Wife of Bath, Clerk, Merchant, Franklin, Pardoner, Monk, Nun’s Priest, and the Tale of Sir Thopas. (±40%) [Note: if as a class we reach 92% compliance in the online class evaluations—11/12—by the last day of class, I will cut three titles from this list.]

III. You will be asked to write two essays (±50%). Here are four potential essay topics that you should begin thinking about, two of which will appear on the exam:

(a) Chaucer’s treatment of marriage in tales generally not considered part of the “Marriage Group” (i.e., not WB, Clerk, Merchant, Franklin)

(b) Chaucer’s treatment of lordship in the Canterbury Tales

(c) the role of the host, Harry Bailly. Questions you might consider: how does Chaucer use this figure to control or manage our response to the Tales on which he comments, or to the pilgrims he calls upon? What role does Harry play in the dramatic interactions of the pilgrims themselves? Are these roles related?

(d) Chaucer's use of fabliaux throughout the Canterbury Tales—their function in the scheme of the poem, their relations with one another and with other tales, the kind of perspective on the world they represent, etc.