ENGLISH 4260: CHAUCER SPRING 2020

IMITATION ASSIGNMENTS (Due Wed May 6)

Pick one of the following options.

Under no circumstances should you sit down in front of a blank screen or a blank page and try to write consecutive lines of poetry. Trust me on this.

I will supply a brief lesson in how to construct an iambic pentameter line shortly. Really, anyone can do it!

I: 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 Prioress, 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. At this stage you can jot down any particularly amusing rhymes you might like to make, to see if they can be worked into the finished portrait.

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

II: Monk’s Tale imitation

Write a modern English addition to the Monk’s Tale, i.e., two to three short de casibus tragedies in his iambic pentameter, eight-line stanza (ababbcbc), totaling at least 32 lines/4 stanzas.

My advice would be to select your victims of Fortune from modern examples (celebrities are good), though historical figures are eligible too, provided that the stories are—like

the Monk’s—more or less accurate. Review some of the Monk’s shorter accounts (the “modern instances,” for example, or Alexander or Julius Caesar, to get a sense of how they are built (e.g., the proportion of narration to lamentation, or the level of detail included). As with the previous option, starting with a prose sketch would probably be the most effective way to get a sense of what will work and what won’t, or what will fit and what won’t.

Your tragedies may or may not be thematically related to one another, but they should all adopt the fall-of-Fortune pattern that structures the Monk’s tales. When you have finished, add to your text a one-page explanation what is particularly “Chaucerian” or “Monkish” about your tales.

III: Parson’s Tale imitation

Chaucer’s Parson loves to anatomize; he comes up with sixteen different sub-species of Pride, “and many another twig that I kan nat declare.”

Write a 3-page prose anatomy of some modern practice or concept, following the model of Chaucer’s account of the Seven Deadly Sins in The Parson’s Tale. You can choose to update one of the sins (how does Pride manifest itself online, you might ask?) or pick some other social practice that lends itself to schematization (No instruction booklets, please!).

Think about the Parson’s style and try to capture it—the way he enumerates and connects things, for example, or the way he inserts himself into his treatise with first-person interjections.