Canterbury Tales First Essay

EN311: The Canterbury Tales

First Essay Assignment

Your first essay (about 6-8 pages long) is due at the beginning of class on Wednesday, March 21.

In this essay, compare and contrast any two of the prologues or tales that we have read: the General Prologue; the Knight’s Tale; the Miller’s, Reeve’s, Cook's, Man of Law's and Wife of Bath’s Prologues and Tales; the Shipman’s Tale.

Here are some suggested topics for the essay:

Consider the representation of women in romance and in fabliau. You could compare Emily in the Knight’s Tale to Alison in the Miller’s Tale or to the miller’s wife or daughter in the Reeve’s Tale or to the merchant’s wife in the Shipman’s Tale. Technically, the Wife of Bath’s Tale is also a romance, though it does seem purposefully to subvert many of the conventional expectations of the genre, so you could also compare the hag in that tale to another character. You will want to pay particular attention to the depictions of female sexuality and female freedom, to the degree of freedom or autonomy women are granted in different genres and different stories, and to whether female characters challenge or exemplify conventional stereotypes.
Compare and contrast the fabliaux told by the Miller and the Reeve. You could focus on style, on characterization, on theme, or on what the tales reveal about the tellers themselves.
The Knight’s Tale clearly implies a social vision, an idea of how society is or should be organized. Compare this tale to another tale with an alternative or competing social vision, such as the Miller’s Tale, the Reeve’s Tale, or the Wife of Bath’s Prologue. Or, compare the social vision of the Knight’s Tale to that implied by the General Prologue.
With reference to both the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and her tale, explain whether you think the Wife of Bath is ultimately a positive or a negative representation of a woman and women’s goals, ideals, and experiences.
Which is the more appropriate tale for the Wife of Bath—the Wife of Bath’s Tale or the Shipman’s Tale? Defend your choice with specific references to the tales and to the Wife of Bath’s Prologue.
The Canterbury Tales, notoriously, are full of sex. Compare and contrast the ways sex is used and described in two of the tales, and explain what the thematic significance is of it.
Chaucer’s characters also live in a world of money, commerce, and wealth. Compare the depiction of this social reality in two of the tales or prologues, such as the General Prologue, the Reeve’s Tale, the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, or the Shipman’s Tale. Combining this topic with the previous one, you could explain how money and sex interact dramatically and thematically in two of the texts.

You may, if you wish, write on a different topic, but please discuss it with me first.

A portion of class on Wednesday, March 7 will be devoted to a workshop in preparation for the mid-term essay. Please bring to class a proposed thesis sentence for your essay.

Format: All submitted papers should follow the Modern Language Association (MLA) guidelines for formatting a paper. These guidelines can be found in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th ed., which is available in the Reference Section of the library and in the Writing Center, but they are also summarized on pp. 121-162 of Hacker & Sommers’s Pocket Style Manual. When commenting on your essays, I will refer to Hacker on matters of format and style.

Following the MLA style, all papers should cite their sources on every occasion that they are used, and all paper should include a complete list of works cited.