ENGLISH 4620: CHAUCER FIRST ESSAY ASSIGNMENT

GRADY SPRING 2013

Essays on one of the topics below should be double-spaced (one-inch margins/12-point type) and four to six pages (±1500 words) in length. Be sure to refer as helpfully and specifically as possible to the texts upon which you're basing your argument--and be sure to have an argument or thesis. Your essay should have an original title, and it should not use the word “relatable.” Essays are due on MONDAY, FEBRUARY 18; electronic submissions are preferred (fgrady@umsl.edu)

1. Design your own topic, of suitable specificity and sophistication, about something that interests you in the portion of the Canterbury Tales we’ve read so far. A brief consultation with the instructor is required; talking with one another is recommended, too, and I’d like to receive a paragraph or email describing your topic by Wednesday, February 13.

2. One critic has described how Thebes and its citizens always represent a principle of disorder in Chaucer’s poetry, a theme to which he repeatedly returns. With the contrast of Thebes and Athens in mind, write an essay about order and disorder in the Knight’s Tale.

3. The narrator of the Knight’s Tale is addicted to the occupatio, which in one sense is not surprising, given its much longer source in Boccaccio’s Teseida. Is his use of the device thematically consistent? That is, does the Knight tend to use the occupatio to condense or skip over a specific kind of material—and if so, what does that habit tell us about his attitude or his angle towards his material?

4. Critic Charles Muscatine writes of the Knight’s Tale that “When we look at the poem's structure, we find symmetry to be its most prominent feature.” Describe that symmetry and discuss its function in the tale.

5. (a) The Knight’s Tale explicitly and successfully celebrates healing power of chivalric ritual and its capacity to bring order to a world beset by chaotic and sometimes malign forces. Doesn’t it?

(b) Theseus in the Knight’s Tale: principled spokesman for the chivalric life in his efforts to bring order to a chaotic world, or crypto-fascist control freak devoted to conquest?

6. Hippolyta and Emelye are Amazons, or so we’re told, hardy participants in “the grete bataille for the nones / Bitwixen Atthenes and Amazones.” What in the world happens to them?

7. Survey the portraits of the religious folk described in the General Prologue (Prioresse, Monk, Friar, Clerk, Parson, Summoner, Pardoner) and, knowing that later developments may make you want to change your mind, hazard some opinions about the nature of Chaucerian anticlericalism.

8. In Palamon and Arcite, the Knight's Tale depicts lovers who can easily be identified as "courtly." Is the courtly ethos depicted as admirable? silly? elevating? impractical? Is it simply a screen for other kinds of relations, or is it a sincere expression of feeling? Is it all of the above? What clues in the text--provided by the narrator or the poet, or by the reactions of other characters (like Theseus)--support your characterization of Chaucer’s treatment of fin amour?