1.
Write an essay on the tension between fabula and historia in The Clerk’s Tale.
2.
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.
Reading List
Primary
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.
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