Tentative Syllabus Fall 2004
English 6105:01: Seminar in British Literature
I
Instructor: Dr. Micheal Crafton
Time: Monday
Office: TLC 225
Office phone: 770-836-6512
Office hours: T, Th 9:30 -11:30
and by appointment
Course
Subtitle:
Geoffrey
Chaucer: The Pilgrims and Their Critics
Course
Description:
The critical
reception of Chaucer is perhaps one of the longest running in all of English
literature, since Anglo-Saxon or Old English literature was generally ignored until
the seventeenth century and even then did not become much of an item until the
Romantic period. But with the
fifteenth-century manuscripts of Chaucer, the illustrations, and especially
William Caxton’s early printed editions, the critical tradition can be said to
begin and now in the twenty-first century, the Chaucer industry is stronger
than it has ever been with an expanding population of scholars and critics and
recent popular culture expressions such as Columbia Tristar’s
film A Knight’s Tale and most recently the BBC modernized production of The
Canterbury Tales.
This class will survey Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales and its vast and diverse representation of different genres –
tools for literary study – themes and issues that remain central in literary
studies of all types and all ages.
However, we will also focus on the major schools of critics who have
greatly influenced the way the CT has been read. Some of those schools are the following:
human drama school, New Criticism, Patristic and
Texts:
Beidler, Peter G., ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: The Wife of
Chaucer,
Geoffrey. The
Cooper, Helen.
Schoeck, Richard, and Jerome Taylor,
eds. Chaucer Criticism: The
Web
Resources:
Requirements
and Grade Weights:
|
Two Short
Papers (4 pages each) Group Oral
Report (15-20 min) Individual
Oral Report (12-15) Research
Paper Colloquium (10) Research
Paper (15 pages) Active
Participation in Class |
20 % 10 % 10 % 5 % 50 % 5 % |
Course Objectives:
1 Read,
analyze, and discuss selected readings from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
2 These
works will be analyzed in light of their various genres, historical influences,
and similar work by contemporaries.
3 We
will also discuss the variety of critical theories that have employed for
interpreting Chaucer and medieval literature.
4 There
will be oral reports Chaucer’s sources and analogues and on contemporary
scholarly texts.
5
We will certainly spend a good
deal of time learning to read aloud Middle English and learning what we take to
be Chaucer's prosody.
6.
The knowledge gained in the course
will be assessed by the traditional means of written essays and in-class oral
presentations.
CLASS SCHEDULE:
8-23: Introduction
to class, texts, The Canterbury Tales,
Middle English (ME) and begin reading Chaucer's General Prologue (GP)
8-30: Biographical
and critical overviews and General Prologue continued:
GP, Parson’s Prologue (ParsP) page 256 of Kolve; Cooper
1-34, Du Boulay and Howard
in Kolve; Handout by Corrine Saunders available here:
http://www.westga.edu/~mcrafton/corrine_saunders.pdf
or here
9-6: HOLIDAY:
NO CLASS
9-13: More
historical criticism and sources; GP and ParsP
cont’d; Knight’s Tale (KnT) part 1 in Kolve; Loomis and Manley in Schoeck; Sources and analogues
to The GP in Kolve.
9-20: The
Knight's Tale in Kolve; Cooper’s commentary; Frost in
Schoeck
First Group report on Sources and
Analogues
Essay # 1 Due
Report
KT__Josh Todd; Jesse Bishop; Patricia Burgey
9-27: The
Rest of Fragment I: Miller’s Tale (MilT), Reeve’s
Tale (RvT), Cook’s (CkP) in
Kolve; Beichner in Schoeck;
Commentary in Cooper
Report
MilT__Karen Miovas; Liz Hetzel; Marni Federer
Report
RvT___Crystal Shelnutt; Randy
Puritt; Melissa Farley
10-4: Wife
of
Report
WBP_Sandra Clough; Jane McClain; Christina Hogan
Report
WBT__Stephanie Hollenbeck; Jamey Olivira
10-11:
Overview of WB criticism in Beidler: 3-41, 89-114
Robertson and Kittredge
in Kolve
Essay
# 2 Due
(Acceptable authors from the list:
Benson, Lumianski, Ruggiers)
Report_____Jesse Bishop__________________
Report_______Karen Miovas________________
10-18: Marxist
Criticism and the
(Acceptable authors from the list:
Knight (in Crafton’s Office), Patterson, Whittock)
Report______Melissa Farley_______________
Report______Josh Todd____________________
10-25: Other
structures and the Nun’s Priest’s Tale (NPT): Bakhtin:
Josipovici in Kolve; Manley
in Schoeck; NPT in Kolve; Commentary in Cooper
(Acceptable authors from the list: Lindahl, Farrall, Hupé)
Research Paper Topic Due
Report____Elizabeth Hetzel______________
Report____Jane McClain___________________
11-1: Deconstruction
and the Pardoner: Beidler 221-254; Pardoner’s Prologue (PardP)
and (PardT) Tale in Kolve;
Commentary in Cooper
(Acceptable authors from the list:
Leicester, Grudin, Frese,
Williams)
Research Paper Prospectus Due
Report____Jamey Oliveira_________________
Report_____Crystal Shelnutt______________
11-8: Psychoanalytic
Criticism and the Prioress: Beidler 189-220; Prioress’s Tale (PrT); Commentary in Cooper
(Acceptable authors from the list:
Collette, Leicester, Kendrick)
Research Paper Argument Outline Due and
Rough Bibliography Due
Report___Sandra Clough____________________
Report___Marni Federer__(Kendrick)_______
11-15: New
Historicism and the Clerk: Beidler 115-154; Clerk’s Prologue (ClP) and Tale (ClT); Commentary
in Cooper
(Acceptable authors from the list:
Patterson, Jordon, Wallace, Olson)
Research Paper Abstract Due
Report_____Randy Puritt__________________
Report_____Christina Hogan____________
11-22: Feminism
and the Clerk again: Beidler 255-289; Clerk’s Prologue and Tale; Commentary in
Cooper cont’d.
(Acceptable authors from the list:
Crane, Wasserman, Delaney)
Research Paper Rough Draft Due
Report______Stephanie Hollenbeck_________
Report______Patrician Burgey_____________
11-29: Research
Paper Colloquium I
12-6: Research
Paper Colloquium II
DETAILS OF ASSIGNMENTS
GROUP REPORTS: The group will require
at least three students to report on the sources and analogues for a tale or
prologue under consideration for that day.
These reports come early in the term as we are getting to know the text
as well as possible and learning one of the more fundamental of critical
methods, source study. Some of the
sources and analogues are available in Kolve
organized by prologue and tale, although the text does not clarify when a
source is assumed to be of a tale or a prologue or both. The group may wish to consult more sources
and analogues and two texts on reserve in the library can assist with that (i.e.
Robert P. Miller and William Frank Bryan) as well as other sources. The difficulty here, however, is that most of
these sources outside of Kolve and Miller are in
foreign languages.
The
group report (15-20 minutes) will want to achieve three objectives.
1. Ensure that the class understand the
sources itself (what it is, where it comes from and what it has to say).
2. Explain how the source or analogue can
be seen in Chaucer’s text (e.g. what are the similarities, character, narrative
structure, style, theme?).
3. Offer some suggestions as to how an
understanding of the source or analogue might inform, guide, or limit an
interpretation of the Chaucer text.
The group can assign duties within the
group as it wishes, but the report should reveal that each member is doing his
or her equal share of the work.
ORAL
REPORTS: The report
will be a 12- to 15-minute, in-class presentation on a individual scholarly
book from a list. The reporter must
sign up for a report by the second class meeting; there should be no more than
two reports on any given day. For the
presentation, the student should provide the class with an outline of the
report. This outline may be an outline
of the argument of the book or of the talk; also, the reporter may want to pass
out a handout of a passage from the book or illustration. The body of the report should be a brief
overview of the argument, the conclusion – if any, the methodology, and how the
book fits into our discussion of “schools” of Chaucer criticism and to what
extent the book’s readings or argument or method is useful, worthwhile,
admirable, or beautiful or not.
SHORT PAPERS: Theses papers should be about four pages long
(double spaced, 12 pt font, standard margins) 3.5 to 4.5 about two different
subjects. They are designed to reveal
your ability to write short, tight academic prose and reveal your ability to
analyze texts.
Paper # 1: The first paper will analyze the relationship
between a Chaucer text and a source. The
point here will be similar to what is done in the oral report except it will
focus on the relationship of the source to Chaucer and the interpretation that
results from that.
Paper # 2: This paper will analyze one
of the secondary sources, one of the essays either from Schoeck or Kolve (possibly Cooper) explicating the argument in the
essay and the critical theory and method behind it.
TERM
PAPER: The research
paper must be on a single Chaucer unit with at least one tale at the core. That is, it can focus on one tale, or a tale
and prologue, or a tale and the General Prologue, or two tales. The essay can employ any scholarly
methodology. It could provide a reading
of the tale by elucidating something about the tale (e.g., the critical history
of the tale, the relationship of the sources of the tale, the historical
environment of the tale) or it could argue for the importance of a historical
context or provide a psychoanalytic reading or a feminist reading of one school
or another. The paper should be 12-15
pages long, using the latest MLA documentation style, and the research should
be exhaustive relative to the topic and our library's holdings.
In
the process of writing this paper, each student should select a topic by
mid-term and then work toward the paper with a little more work each week:
prospectus, rough bibliography, outline of argument, abstract, rough draft and
final draft.
Colloquium:
The penultimate stage of the research paper process will be the colloquium
presentation. Half the class will
present one week and the other half the next; the half not presenting each week
will be involved in critiquing. Each
presenter will meet with the instructor to discuss the rough draft of the paper
and will provide a peer reviewer with a rough draft. The student will also provide the class with
a solid abstract of the paper. During
the presentation, the student will read the abstract to the class and will
amplify parts of the abstract by reading from the larger paper for certain
parts. This should take about 10
minutes; the reviewer then will then provide the class a written critique of
the paper – strengths and weaknesses – of one page and will talk for five
minutes. The class will then question
the student writer for five minutes and then we will move to the next
presentation. We will have to work by
the clock to move through three presentations an hour.
DAILY
PARTICIPATION: This is most critical. You are expected to attend every class, on
time and not leave early. You are also
expected to have read and digested the material assigned for that day and contribute
to the class your perspectives on this material. This is a seminar, not a lecture course.
Each
day that a primary text of Chaucer is assigned you are required to selected a
short passage (approx. 10 lines) and read it to the class, discuss its
importance. Each class I will call on
two reports.
On
days that we discuss only secondary materials, you should be prepared to
discuss one selection or passage from one selection and hold forth to the class
on your understanding of the meaning of the passage and its interest or
relevance to the material at hand.