Poem analysis

Write a critical and interpretative 3,000-word essay with a strong thesis and coherent argument in answer to ONE of the following questions:

1.Write an essay on the function and characterisation of the narrator in two of Chaucer’s poems.

2.“She ys ded!” (BD 1309). Discuss the treatment of death and bereavement in The Book of the Duchess.

3.Examine Chaucer’s strategy of adapting Boccaccio’s Filostrato in Troilus and Criseyde.

4.Discuss Chaucer’s use of humour in two of his poems. In your answer, draw careful distinction between medieval and modern sensibilities.

5.Do Chaucer’s dream-vision poems clarify or obfuscate their principal themes? You must base your answer on a minimum of two texts.

6.Is Troilus and Criseyde a serious tragedy or a comic subversion of the genre?

7.Explore the different uses Chaucer makes of the classical legacy in Troilus and Criseyde. In your answer, pay attention to the kinds of classical texts Chaucer had, and could have had, access to in the late-fourteenth century.

8.Discuss the treatment of love in The Parliament of Foules or Troilus and Criseyde.

9.“Allas, of me, unto the worldes ende, / Shal neyther ben ywriten nor ysonge / No good word” (V.1058-60). Does Criseyde deserve to be blamed for her choices in Troilus and Criseyde?

10.Discuss the role genre and mode play in the contrasting characterisations of Criseyde and Griselda.

11.Write an essay on the tension between fabula and historia in The Clerk’s Tale.

12.Examine the sincerity or irony of Chaucer’s Retraction in light of fragments IX and X of The Canterbury Tales.

Your essay must include relevant quotation from and reference to primary and secondary texts.

You must work with critical editions of Chaucer’s poems; you may not quote from or refer to translations of his works.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Riverside Chaucer. Ed. Larry D. Benson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.

And/Or

Chaucer, Geoffrey. Dream Visions and Other Poems. Ed. Kathryn L. Lynch. London and New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2007.
—. Troilus and Criseyde. Ed. Stephen A. Barney. London and New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006.
—. The Canterbury Tales: Fifteen Tales and the General Prologue, 2nd edition. Ed. V. A. Kolve and Glending Olson. London and New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2005.

Suggested Secondary Reading

Biographies

Ashton, Gail. Geoffrey Chaucer, Brief Lives. London: Hesperus, 2011.
Brown, Peter. Geoffrey Chaucer, Authors in Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Butterfield, Ardis. Chaucer: A London Life. London: I.B. Tauris, 2019.
Howard, Donald R. Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World. New York: Ballantine, 1987.
Pearsall, Derek. The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: A Critical Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
*Strohm, Paul. Chaucer’s Tale: 1386 and the Road to Canterbury. New York: Viking Penguin, 2014.
*West, Richard. Chaucer 1340-1400: The Life and Times of the First English Poet. London: Robinson, 2002.

Other secondary

Benson, C. David and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Chaucer’s Religious Tales. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990.
Boitani, Piero and Jill Mann, eds. *The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Boyd Goldie, Matthew. Middle English Literature: A Historical Sourcebook. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.
Cooper, Helen. The Canterbury Tales, 2nd edition, Oxford Guides to Chaucer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Ellis, Steve, ed. Chaucer: An Oxford Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Gallowat, Andrew, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Gray, Douglas. The Oxford Companion to Chaucer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Lerer, Seth, ed. The Yale Companion to Chaucer. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006.
*Minnis, Alastair. The Cambridge Introduction to Chaucer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
*Nuttall, Jenni. Troilus and Criseyde: A Reader’s Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Phillips, Helen, ed. Chaucer and Religion. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010.
Saunders, Corinne, ed. A Concise Companion to Chaucer. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.
Scanlon, Larry, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Wallace, David, ed. The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Windeatt, Barry. Troilus and Criseyde, Oxford Guides to Chaucer. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.

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