Required Books:

Benson, Larry D., gen. ed. The Riverside Chaucer. Oxford, 2008.

Botiani and Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion, 2nd ed. Cambridge, 2003.

Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am (Fordham UP, 2008)

Travis, Peter W. Disseminal Chaucer: Rereading the Nun’s Priest’s Tale. Notre Dame, 2009.

Requirements:

1. Research on your own criticism on a Tale published since 1990 (a somewhat arbitrary date, I know) and discuss why two articles you single out are important not only in terms of what they say about the Tale but in terms of the critical / theoretical perspective the author adopts in order to say what he or she says.

2. One paper on a topic of your choice related to the Canterbury Tales, to be developed in consulation with me, 2k words.

Whylome as antique stories tellen vs,

Those two were foes the fellonest on ground,

And battell made the dreddest daungerous,

That euer shrilling trumpet did resound;

Though now their acts be no where to be found,

As that renowmed Poet them compyled,

With warlike numbers and Heroicke sound,

Dan Chaucer, well of English vndefyled,

On Fames eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled.

But wicked Time that all good thoughts doth waste,

And workes of noblest wits to nought out weare,

That famous moniment hath quite defaste,

And robd the world of threasure endlesse deare,

The which mote haue enriched all vs heare.

O cursed Eld the cankerworme of writs,

How may these rimes, so rude as doth appeare,

Hope to endure, sith workes of heauenly wits

Are quite deuourd, and brought to nought by little bits?

  Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , Book IV,   Canto II, Stanzas 32-33

WHat needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones,

The labour of an age in piled Stones,

Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid

Under a Star-ypointing Pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame, [ 5 ]

What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.

For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art,

Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart [ 10 ]

Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd Book,

Those Delphick lines with deep impression took,

Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,

Dost make us Marble with too much conceaving;

And so Sepulcher'd in such pomp dost lie, [ 15 ]

That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.