English 70500
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Fall 2008
Professor Steven F. Kruger
Phone: 212-817-8352
Email: skruger@gc.cuny.edu
Office: 4409.01
Office hours: M 4-6, T 1-3, W 3-4, F 11-12 & by appointment
This course will consider a variety of questions raised by Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, which we will read in the original Middle English. A work that is – in Donald R. Howard’s resonant formulation – “unfinished but complete” and that survives in a variety of quite different textual incarnations (with the order of the tales varying widely from manuscript to manuscript), The Canterbury Tales raises significant questions about medieval authorship, principles of poetic structuring and closure, manuscript transmission, and scribal practice. The tales themselves are various in genre and poetic form; they also are often based upon, even (loosely) translated from, earlier sources. We will consider how their variety, and the variety of the sources, shapes our reading of individual tales and of the larger work in which they are contained. The Canterbury Tales is often taken as a work concerned to comment upon, or even intervene in, late medieval English social arrangements, and we will consider whether and how the work provides social or political commentary on the “estates” of English society; on gender hierarchies; on the status of the Church and its clerical representatives; on war; on marriage and the family (etc.).
Requirements:
Texts and E-Reserve:
The single required test for the course is a good edition of Chaucer’s complete works or of The Canterbury Tales – that is, an edition that includes enough annotation and bibliography to make it useful for you as a student. I will be using, and recommend, Larry Benson’s Riverside Chaucer, though it is expensive and unwieldy; it has fuller explanatory notes, and more bibliography, than most other texts (although the bibliography is now out of date). Another possibility, with more up-to-date bibliography, is Robert Boenig and Andrew Taylor’s Broadview edition of the Canterbury Tales (but this contains just CT, not Chaucer’s other works; if you think you’ll be working extensively with Chaucer in the future, then the Riverside Chaucer is probably the better choice).
If you order books through the Graduate Center’s “virtual bookstore,” the Mina Rees Library gets some money back. Go to http://www.gc.cuny.edu/bookshop/.
I have placed most of the course materials on E-reserve through the Library. You can access the E-reserve for the class by going to http://eres.gc.cuny.edu/eres/coursepage.aspx?cid=1474 and entering the password for the course, which is “XXXXXXXXXX.” A few of the books listed here are available electronically; for the rest E-reserve will provide a call number and a note about status, but you will need to go to the circulation desk in the library to get the hard copy of the book.
In addition to books and other material listed on the Schedule of Readings below, a selection of other Chaucer criticism and medievalist work is on reserve. This is only the tip of the iceberg, but it gives a sense of some of the important older and newer critical conversations that have circulated around Chaucer, the Canterbury Tales, and late-medieval culture.
Bibliographical:
Several Websites now provide useful bibliographical material on Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales. See, for instance:Schedule of Readings:
The schedule of readings presented here follows the Ellesmere order of the Canterbury Tales (the order also used in the Riverside Chaucer, and in most modern editions of the Tales; the Ellesmere manuscript is one of the earliest surviving manuscripts of the Tales, and the one given greatest authority by most [but not all] Chaucer scholars).
Along with the primary readings from Chaucer, I have included two other kinds of recommended, secondary readings on the schedule below, labeled either as critical/historical or literary/contextual. Most of these will be available either as books on reserve in the library or as electronic materials accessible through the E-reserve system. Not all of these secondary materials needs to be read for every class; in the week before each class, we will discuss which might be given the highest level of priority (along, of course, with the reading from the Canterbury Tales itself).
Additional secondary materials will be added to the reading list depending upon the texts groups choose for their presentations. These will also be made available through the E-reserve system. (Students should present the text to me either in hard copy or electronically at least a week prior to the presentation, so that I can then arrange to make the reading available to the class as a whole.) As students determine what they will focus their presentations on, I will update the following schedule of readings online: it will be posted through my home page on the Graduate Center Website – at http://web.gc.cuny.edu/English/fac_skruger70500.html.
August 27
Introductory
General Prologue (lines 1-18)
Reading Middle English
September 3
General Prologue
Literary/contextual: Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes, lines 1-65, available at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/lydgtfrm.htm; also see the opening of Lydgate’s Troy Book, available at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/troyprfr.htm
Critical/historical: Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer, chapter 1 (“Chaucer and the Structure of Social Relations”)
September 10
Knight’s Tale
Literary/contextual: Boccaccio’s Il Teseida, 11.13-17 (corresponding to KT 2853-81)
Critical/historical: Mark Miller, Philosophical Chaucer, ch. 2 ("Normative longing in the Knight's Tale")
Susan Crane, Gender and Romance in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, ch. 5 ("Adventure")
Presentation: Gina Grimaldi, Paul Holchak, Jennifer Little (from Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy)
September 17
Miller’s Tale, Reeve’s Tale, Cook’s Tale
Literary/contextual: Old French fabliau: "The Tresses" (from the collection Fabliaux Fair & Foul)
Critical/historical: Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History, ch. 5 ("The Miller's Tale and the Politics of Laughter")
Peggy Knapp, Chaucer and the Social Contest, ch. 3 ("Robyn the Miller's Thrifty Work")
V.A. Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative, ch. 5 ("The Reeve's Prologue and Tale: Death as Tapster and the Horse Unbridled")
Presentation: Michael Miller, Heather Zuber, Judd Staley (Greg Walker, "Rough Girls and Squeamish Boys: The Trouble with Absolon in the Miller's Tale," Essays and Studies (2002): Writing Gender and Genre in Medieval Literature: Approaches to Old and Middle English Texts, ed. Elaine Treharne (Boydell and Brewer), 61-92.)
September 24
Man of Law’s Tale
Literary/contextual: Gower’s Tale of Constance (http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/%7Echaucer/special/authors/gower/gow-cons.html)
Critical/historical: Susan Schibanoff, “Worlds Apart: Orientalism, Antifeminism, and Heresy in Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale”
Froissart, Chronicles, on the Papal Schism, at http://www.uvawise.edu/history/wciv1/civ1ref/froischi.htm
Presentation: Adin Lears, Tim Peterson, Andrew Statum (The Middle English Romance Emare, available at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/emarefrm.htm; introduction available at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/emint.htm.)
FINAL PROJECT PROPOSAL DUE
October 1 NO CLASSES
October 8 NO CLASSES
October 15
Wife of Bath’s Tale, Friar’s Tale, Summoner’s Tale
Literary/contextual: Weddynge of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell, at http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/litsubs/romances/wedding.html
Gower’s Tale of Florent, at http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/%7Echaucer/special/authors/gower/gow-flor.html
Critical/historical: Carolyn Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics [ch. 4: “‘Glose/bele chose: The Wife of Bath and Her Glossators”]
Elaine Tuttle Hansen, Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender [ch. 2: “The Wife of Bath and the Mark of Adam”]
Karma Lochrie, Heterosyncrasies [ch. 4: “Before the Tribade: Medieval Anatomies of Female Masculinity and Pleasure”]
Presentation: Kimberley Garcia, Brendan O’Neill ("Of Thes Frer Mynours" and "Preste, Ne Monke, Ne Yit Chanoun")
October 22
Clerk’s Tale, Merchant’s Tale
Literary/contextual: Petrarch’s Griselda (from Sources and Analogues, E-reserve)
Critical/historical: Glenn Burger, Chaucer’s Queer Nation (chapter 3)
David Wallace, Chaucerian Polity (chapter 10)
October 29
Squire’s Tale, Franklin’s Tale
Critical/historical: Hetoum on the Mongols [try to read parts of Book III, and get a sense of the overall structure of Hetoum's La Fleur des Histoires de la terre de l'Orient], at http://rbedrosian.com/hetumint.htm
Spenser, Book IV, canto II (esp. stanzas 31-38), of Fairie Queene, at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/%7Erbear/queene4.html#Cant.%20II.
Literary/contextual: Wan-Chuan Kao, "Conditions Shameful and Unshameful: Affective Conjugality in the Franklin's Tale." [on E-reserve, Word document]
November 5
Physician’s Tale, Pardoner’s Tale
Literary/contextual: The Canterbury Interlude and Merchant's Tale of Beryn, lines 1-732, at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/berynfrm.htm
Critical/historical: Donald R. Howard, The Idea of the Canterbury Tales, ch. 6: "The Pardoner and the Parson" [book on reserve]
Glenn Burger, Chaucer’s Queer Nation, ch. 4: "Queer Performativity in Fragment VI" [book on reserve]
Steven F. Kruger, “Claiming the Pardoner: Toward a Gay Reading of Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale” [E-reserve]
Robert Sturges, Chaucer’s Pardoner and Gender Theory, ch. 3: "The Pardoner's Different Erotic Practices" [book on reserve]
A.J. Minnis, "Reclaiming the Pardoners" [E-reserve]
Presentation: Kimberley Garcia, Adin Lears, Judd Staley (from Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text)
FINAL PROJECT BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE
November 12
Shipman’s Tale, Prioress’s Tale, Tale of Sir Thopas
Literary/contextual: “litel clergeon” analogue: Alphonsus a Spina, “The Expulsion of the Jews from England” [E-reserve, PDF]
Critical/historical: Katharine Jager, “‘Som Deyntee Thyng’: Possibility and Chaucer’s Unfinished Business,” on Tale of Sir Thopas [E-reserve, Word document]
Jeffrey Cohen, Medieval Identity Machines [ch. 1: "Time's Machines"]
Steven F. Kruger, The Spectral Jew: Conversion and Embodiment in Medieval Europe [ch. 1: "The Spectral Jew"]
Presentation: Gina Grimaldi, Michael Miller, Tim Peterson: Merrall Llewelyn Price, "Sadism and Sentimentality: Absorbing Antisemitism in Chaucer's Prioress," Chaucer Review 43:2 (2008): 197-214. (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/chaucer_review/v043/43.2.price.pdf) [you'll need to be signed into the GC system, or another system with access to Project Muse, to use the link; you can also navigate to the article using the GC library databases (Project Muse) or full-text journals (Chaucer Review)]
November 19
Tale of Melibee, Monk’s Tale, Nun’s Priest’s Tale
Literary/contextual: Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, I.ii-iii [E-reserve]
Dante, Inferno, on Ugolino [canto XXXII.124-XXXIII.90; E-reserve]
Critical/historical: Larry Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power [ch. 8, especially the section on NPT]
November 24/5
Individual meetings about student projects – no class meeting this week
December 3
Second Nun’s Tale, Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale
Literary/contextual: Life of St. Cecilia [Golden Legend] [E-reserve]
Critical/historical: Isabel Davis, Writing Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages [ch. 4: "'And of my swynk yet blered is myn ye': Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman looks in the mirror]
Presentation: Jennifer Little, Heather Zuber: Jonathan Hughes, "Alchemy and the Exploration of Late Medieval Sexuality," in Medieval Virginities, ed. Anke Bernau, Ruth Evans, and Sarah Salih (Toronto UP, 2003)
December 10
Manciple’s Tale, Parson’s Tale, Retraction
For the Parson's Tale, read at least the following: Parson's Prologue (X.1-74); Parson's Tale (X.75-132; 316-336; 387-389; 956-962; 1029-1080; for 390-1028, choose one of the seven deadly sins on which to focus, Superbia [390-483], Invidia [484-532], Ira [533-676], Accidia [677-738], Avaricia [739-817], Gula [818-835], Luxuria [836-955]).
Presentation: Brendan O'Neill, Andrew Statum, Paul Holchak: Karen A. Winstead, "Chaucer's Parson's Tale and the Contours of Orthodoxy," The Chaucer Review 43 (2009): 239-59.
December 17
Conclusions
FINAL PROJECT DUE