English 516/WTSG 305/MDST 316: Chaucer and the Subversive Other. Women, Gender, Class, Nation, Religion (http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~jchance/ch.htm)
Fall, 2002 2:30-5:30
T Dr. Chance
A
fourteenth-century poet who worked
for
the king as controller of customs and
works,
Chaucer nevertheless in his poems
embedded
sympathetic treatments of
women,
the commons, homosociality, and
otherness
as expressed through multicultural
indicators
expressive of nation and religion.
This
seminar will explore exemplary
treatments
of alterity and difference in
Chaucer
and the complex poetic strategies
he
chose to conceal his sympathies. In order
to
see clearly how radical such strategies are,
this
seminar will employ disjunctive
combinations
of tales and works (antinarratival
in
sequence) as subject for discussion and
reading.
Text List (All on reserve)
Geoffrey
Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales:
Complete, ed. Larry Benson et
al.
(Houghton Mifflin College, 2000)
$44.36
(amazon.com)
Peasants’
Revolt of 1381,
ed. R. Dobson, 2nd ed. (Prometheus Books) PR1895.S561989
Troilus
and Criseyde,
ed. R. A. Shoaf (Michigan State University Pres) $15.95
Troilus
and Criseyde,
trans. Nevill Coghill (Viking Press) $9.95
Love
Visions of Chaucer, trans. Brian Stone (Penguin) PR1852.S8 1983
Chaucer, ed. Corinne Saunders
(Blackwells, 2001) $29.95
Selected
Essays (On Reserve; see below);
Week 1: Introduction to the
Background. The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and Social Change
Read:
Selections from *R. Dobson, ed. The
Peasants Revolt of 1381, 2nd ed. (Macmillan, 1983) DA235.P43
1983
Stephen Justice, Writing
and Rebellion: England in 1381 (California, 1994), pp.13- 66. PR275.H5 J871994
Write:
2 pp. critical analysis of any ONE document in Dobson
Week 2: The General Prologue
to the Canterbury Tales: Social Order
and Subversion
Sept. 3
Read:
Chaucer's General Prologue to the Canterbury
Tales
Parson's Prologue and Tale (skim)
Richard Firth Green, "John Ball's Letters," in
*Barbara Hanawalt, ed. Chaucer's England:
Literature in Historical Context (Minnesota, 1992), pp. 176-200.
Week 3: Knight's Tale and Miller's
Tale: Literary Interruption as Subversion
Sept. 10
Read: Chaucer's Knight's Tale and Miller's
Tale
Lee Patterson, "'No Man His Reson Herde":
Peasant Consciousness, Chaucer's
Miller, and the Structure of the Canterbury Tales," in Literary Practice and Social Change in
Britain, 1380-1530, ed. Lee Patterson (California, 1990), pp. 113-55.
PR275.S63 L51990
Week 4: The Nun's Priest's Tale: Gender Issues and the Peasants Revolt
Sept. 17
Read:
The Nun's Priest's Tale
Ann Astell, "Chaucer's Ricardian Allegories,"
Political Allegory in Late Medieval England (Cornell, 1999), pp. 94-116. PR275.P64 A68.1999
Week 5: The Clerk's Tale: The
Peasants Revolt and Gender Issues
Sept. 24
Read: The Clerk's Tale
Elaine Tuttle Hansen, “The Powers of Silence: The Case
of the Clerk’s Griselda,” in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed.
Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (U. Georgia, 1988), pp. 230-49. HQ1143.W63
1988
Week 6: The Wife of Bath's
Prologue and Tale: Alisoun as Cleric
Oct. 1
Read: Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale
Chance, "Maister
Alisoun's Feminist Self-Mythography," *The Mythographic Chaucer (Minnesota, 1995), pp. 214-231 PR1933.S35 C43 1995
Louise O. Fradenburg, "'Fulfild of fairye': The
Social Meaning of Fantasy in the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale," rpt.
in "Psychoanalytic Criticism and
the Wife of Bath," in The Wife of
Bath: Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. Peter G. Beidler (Bedford Books, 1996),
189-220. PR1868.W592 B451996
Week 7: The Prioress and the Second Nun: Antisemitism and Mystical
Subversion
Oct. 8
Read: The
Prioress's Tale and the Second Nun's
Tale
Louise O. Fradenberg,
"Criticism, Anti-Semitism, and the Prioress's Tale," Exemplaria 1 (1989): 69-116. PN661.E9 v.1 1989
Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of
the World (Oxford, 1985), pp. 3-23,
27-59 BJ1409.S35 1985
Week 8:
Oct. 15 Midterm Break
Week 9: The Man of Law's Tale:
Constance and the Pagan Other
Oct. 22
Read: Man of
Law's Tale
David Raybin, "Custance
and History: Woman as Outsider in Chaucer's Man
of Law's Tale," Studies in the
Age of Chaucer 12 (1990): 65-84.
PR1901.S88 v. 12
Weeks 10-11 The Pardoner's Tale
and the Hous of Fame: Homosociality
and Subjectivity (the Self as Queer/Other)
Nov. 5-12
Read: The
Pardoner's Tale; Hous of Fame
Carolyn Dinshaw, "Eunuch Hermeneutics," Chaucer's Sexual Poetics (Wisconsin,
1989)), pp. 156-86; 256-78 PR1933.S35 D56 1989
John Boswell, “The Triumph
of Ganymede: Gay Literature of the High Middle Ages,” Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in
Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth
Century (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp.
243-66. HQ76.3 .E8 B67
Jane Chance, "'Geffrey'
as Dido, Ganymede, 'Marcia': Mythographic and Gender Parody in the Hous of Fame," The Mythographic Chaucer, pp.
45-82
Week 12: Gay Men in Troilus and
Criseyde, bk. 1: Troilus and Ganymede
Nov. 19
Read: Troilus
and Criseyde, bk. 1
Catherine Sanok,
"Criseyde, Cassandre, and the Thebaid:
Women and the Theban Subtext of Chaucer's Troilus
and Criseyde," SAC 20
(1998): 41-71. PR1901.S88 v.20
Week 13: Trading Women in Troilus
and Criseyde, bks. 2-3: Criseyde Raptus
Nov. 26
Read: Troilus
and Criseyde, bks. 2-3
Sarah Stanbury, "The Voyeur and the Private Life in
Troilus and Criseyde," Studies in the Age of Chaucer 13 (1991): 141-58. PR1901.S88 v.13
Week 14: The Cunning Greek in Troilus
and Criseyde: Diomed as Other
Dec. 3
Read: Troilus and Criseyde, bks. 4-5
Constance
Jordan, “Boccaccio’s In-Famous
Women: Gender and Civic Virtue in the De mulieribus
claris,” in Ambiguous Realities: Women
in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Carole Levin and Jeannie
Watson (Wayne State, 1987), pp.25-47. PN56.5 .W64 A49 1987
Dec. 18 Date Due for Take Home Exams; Jan. 2: Grades Due
Requirements: participation, weekly ungraded short papers, seminar paper 15-25 pp.
(no unexcused absences, please). Undergraduates may enroll with the permission
of instructor.
Office hours: 11-12 and 1-2 TH
Office: 501 Fondren
E-mail: jchance@rice.edu
Phone: 713-348-2625
Fax: 713-348-5991 or 713-524-3304 (home)