ENGLISH 4620 FIRST ESSAY ASSIGNMENT

GRADY FALL 2009

Essays should be typed and double-spaced with one-inch margins and four to six pages long on one of the topics below. 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 definitely not confuse "it's" and "its", even once. Essays are due on WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17; electronic submissions are acceptable.

1. Design your own topic, of suitable specificity and sophistication, about something that interests you in The Parliament of Fowls, The Legend of Good Women, or Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. 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 Thursday, February 11.

2. Was Chaucer really, as the 15^th-century Scottish Chaucerian Gavin Douglas claimed, “evir (God wait) all womanis frend”? Do the Parlement and the Legend suggest different answers to this question?

3. Starting with the role of the tercelet in the Parliament of Fowls, write an essay in which you discuss the way in which feminine desire gets represented--if it does--in Chaucer's work. What do women (and birds) want--if they want anything? And what effect does acknowledging (or not acknowledging) their desires have on things [narratives, best-laid plans, the status quo, masculine intentions]? Redefine the terms of this question in any way you need to in order to produce an essay about the status of the female characters in what we've read so far of Chaucer’s poetry.

4. In PF Nature declares that it would be most reasonable for the formel to choose the first, royal tercel, because he is the “gentilleste.” What does that mean, exactly? And does gentility mean the same thing in the Legend? Is it a reliable guide to masculine virtue, an index to a suitor’s fidelity, or something else? (NB—you might want to read another couple of the individual legends to do a good job with this particular topic.)

4. Write an imitation of The Consolation of Philosophy in which you take up the dialogue form in order to explore some moral or philosophical (or other) issue. Your allegorical authority need not be Lady Philosophy, if her advice would not be appropriate; whatever faculty or quality you choose to personify, however, be sure to provide a consistent style and diction for each participant in the conversation. Remember that one goal of this assignment is to capture the style and structure of the Consolation. [Essays on this topic should probably be a bit longer, perhaps 7-8 pages.]

5. The Parliament of Fowls has a pretty extensive soundtrack: the harmony of the spheres, the music in the garden, the sighs in the temple, the noises of the birds, etc. Write an essay about the theme of sound/noise/music in the Parliament.

6. One critical preoccupation concerning the Parliament of Fowls has traditionally been its thematic integrity, and whether it can be said to have any. What holds the Parliament of Fowls together thematically? Do its parts connect logically, or according to some other principle of organization—or not at all? Is there some aspect of structure or form or tone that unifies the poem, in the absence of any consistent thematic development—or is there actually a theme consistently developed? (Translation: What is the Parliament of Fowls really about?)

7. Discuss the role and the character of the Chaucerian narrator, based on the poetry we’ve read so far.

8. Discuss the role of fathers in the Legend of Good Women.

9. Chaucer’s friend and fellow-poet John Gower tells many of the same stories in his Confessio amantis as Chaucer does in the Legend of Good Women, including the story of Medea at 5.3227ff. (as an example of perjury), Ariadne at 5.5231ff. (ingratitude), and Philomela at 5.5551ff. (rapacity). The poems are roughly contemporary. Compare/contrast Gower’s version of one (or more) of these stories with Chaucer’s. Note: a simple list of similarities and differences will not add up to an essay; you must devise a thesis to govern your comparison—e.g., the different stances of the narrator, or the kinds of morals drawn, or the representation of women (or men). Gower’s poem can be found on-line here: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/cav3b5fr.htm

10. Another angle of attack: here are below you’ll find three remarks by three different critics discussing the Legend of Good Women. Use any one of them as a prompt for and essay about the poem.

That is, the Legend's ostensible subject, love, is not its real subject at all. Rather, the poem was written to set forth some of Chaucer's basic views about literature: its sources, its usefulness, its forms, its audiences, and its capacity to represent Christian truth.

Lisa Kiser, Telling Classical Tales: Chaucer and the Legend of Good Women (Cornell, 1983), p.9.

In the event he enacts his revenge upon authority in a number of ways: by radically deforming his auctores, by unmasking the misogynistic violence that underwrites Alceste's version of feminine virtue, by simply refusing to fulfill his commission. But the form of resistance of most interest to us now is the irony with which he treats the cult of "fyn lovynge": subject to9 the intransigent and uncomprehending demands of a gentil audience, the poet in turn subjects gentilesse to a relentless critique....(239) In the world of the legends gentilesse designates not nobility of spirit but social advantage, a superiority of place that unprincipled men use to victimize grasping women.

Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History (Wisconsin, 1991), pp. 238-39.

Cupid gives voice to the essential dilemma of the narrator after Troilus and Criseyde: if one begins to become aware, as he does via the women in his audience, that authoritative tradition proceeds by defaming women, how would one be able to write a poem or construct a literary tradition that is not misogynistic in theme and/or structure? Alceste's representation in the Prologue suggests that the problem can be articulated; however, a positive solution is far from imminent.

Carolyn Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics (Wisonsin, 1989), p.68.