English 4260: Chaucer                 Midterm Exam Preview

I. Seven or eight of these terms will appear on the midterm, where you will be asked to identify four or five of them in a sentence or two, and to indicate their relevance to the Chaucer texts we’ve studied. (30%)

Macrobius

modesty topos

Nicholas Trivet

occupatio

prosimetrum

rhyme royal

De miseria condicionis humane

sense, imagination, reason, intelligence

Thebaid

wheel of Fortune

De planctu Naturae               

demande d’amour

effictio

Ellesmere MS

estates satire

fabliau

fragment

Heroides

hortus conclusus

irresponsibility topos

II. There will be a selection of passages drawn from our reading (PF, LGW, Boe, GProl—Man of Law), which you will be asked to identify (text, speaker, situation) and comment upon (significance). (40%)

III. You will be asked to write one essay (30%). There are three potential essay topics that you should begin thinking about:

(a) the theme of governance in the first fragment of the Canterbury Tales

(b) Chaucer’s self-representation (as narrator? as poet?) in at least three texts

(c) representations of women: the Canterbury Tales vs. the earlier courtly texts