Canterbury Tales- Spring 2012

EN311: CHAUCER'S CANTERBURY TALES

Spring Semester 2012

Wednesday 11:00-1:30

Click here for the course syllabus.

Instructor: Robert Epstein

Office: 120 Donnarumma Hall

Office Hours: Tuesday 11:00-12:00 and 2:00-3:30, or by appointment

Office extension: 2787

E-mail: repstein@fairfield.edu

DESCRIPTION

This upper-level seminar studies selections from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the most celebrated and influential work of medieval English literature. Our goals are to become familiar with Middle English language and Chaucer’s poetic style, to analyze the tales in detail, to read and engage works relevant works of Chaucerian criticism, and to try to understand how Chaucer’s writing is shaped by and also gives form to its social contexts.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Among the educational goals for this course are that students:

Demonstrate knowledge of Chaucer's Middle English language and his poetry (Core Pathway: "Engaging Traditions")
Analyze and evaluate the literary and critical traditions of English literature as systems of knowledge and power (Core Pathway: "Engaging Traditions")
Develop creative capacity and skills in written expression, using the full resources of language, in developing theses and arguments based on close readings of texts and drafting and revising thesis-driven essays (Core Pathway: "Rhetoric and Reflection")

REQUIREMENTS

Class attendance and participation: Students are required to attend class prepared to discuss the assigned material. This seminar is based primarily on class discussion. Each week, there will be assigned primary readings from the Canterbury Tales. In some weeks, there will also be assigned a secondary reading of critical or supplemental material. The secondary readings will either be posted on Electronic Reserves or distributed as photocopies in class. The secondary readings are part of the required reading and students must read them thoroughly and diligently.

Response papers and summative essay: For most class meetings, students will write a response paper, about a page in length, on the assigned readings. These are not graded, but are required. They are due at the beginning of the class on the day assigned. Responses papers are intended both to give more practice in writing and to facilitate class discussion, so late response papers cannot be accepted. Students will collect their response papers in a folder throughout the semester. At the end of the course, students will review their portfolio of response papers and submit them along with a summative essay analyzing how their views of the materials and topics have evolved over the course of the semester.

Mid-term essay: There will be a mid-term essay. This will be a paper of about 6-8 pages on some element of the Canterbury Tales that we will have discussed to that point.

Final exam: There will be a final exam. This exam will be primarily quotation-based. That is, it will ask students to identify, interpret and discuss passages that we have discussed from the Canterbury Tales. Obviously, therefore, it is important that students become familiar with Chaucer’s Middle English.

Critical research paper: At the end of the semester, students will submit a critical research paper on one of the pilgrims or tales from the Canterbury Tales. This paper will be 12-14 pages in length and will make use of at least two critical sources. Students may use the secondary critical sources already assigned, but we will also work on finding other critical sources using the campus resources.

GRADES

Papers are due at the beginning of class on the day indicated on the syllabus. Unless I have explicitly granted an extension before the due date, late papers will be penalized one-third of a letter grade per day. (A paper that would have earned a B+ will receive a B if it is one day late, a B- if it is two days late, and so on.)

After the first essays are submitted, I will read them and return them with grades and with comments and suggestions. Students will then have one week from the day the graded papers are returned to revise the papers in light of my comments and to resubmit them for re-grading. The grade on the revised essay may go up by as much as a full letter grade. It may not go up at all; it will not go down. This option is offered in order to encourage you to think of every essay as a work in progress and to revise your work as thoroughly and as frequently as possible. Please note that papers submitted after the original deadline may not be re-submitted. There will also be an opportunity to revise and resubmit the critical research paper.

As you write and revise your essays, please keep in mind that there are peer-tutors in the Writing Center trained to help students of any level develop work at any stage.

Final grades for the semester will be calculated according to the following formula:

ACADEMIC HONESTY

Secondary critical sources are not required for the first essays assignment in this course, but they will be required on the critical research paper. On any assignment, however, you must fully cite any sources that you use. The source must appear in the list of works cited at the end of the essay, and each source must be cited on every occasion that you make use of its words or ideas. This is true if the source is your primary source (the text you are studying) or a critical source (an analysis of the work published elsewhere), and it is true if the source is printed or electronic, including internet sources. You may use any standard method of citation, including the Chicago Style, but it is recommended that you use the Modern Language Association (MLA) Style of documentation, which uses parenthetical citations and a list of works cited at the end of the essay. This style is described in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, which is available in the reference section of the library and in the Writing Center.

The failure to fully cite sources within your submitted work is a form of plagiarism. Plagiarism is the appropriation of ideas, data, work, or language of others and submitting them as one’s own to satisfy the requirements of a course. Plagiarism constitutes theft and deceit. Special care should be taken, when cutting and pasting materials or when paraphrasing, to cite sources correctly and to use quotation marks around exact words from source materials. Actions that result in plagiarism may be intentional or unintentional. Consequently, students must understand the concept of plagiarism. When reading, processing, or using materials from any source, appropriate documentation is always essential.

The consequences of plagiarism may range from failure on the assignment to failure for the course and university disciplinary action. Resources such as the library (ext. 2178) and the Writing Center (www.fairfield.edu/writingcenter) are available on campus to assist you in your academic endeavors. You are encouraged to take advantage of these resources.

TEXTS

The required text for the class is available at the Fairfield Bookstore:

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000).

Other reading assignments will be provided in class or made available through the university’s Electronic Reserves.