Elizabeth Scala

Instructor:  Scala, E            Areas:  I / D

Unique #:  35945            Flags:  Global cultures

Semester:  Fall 2013            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: This course serves as an introduction to one of the three most important poets in the English tradition—Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton—and the earlier form of the English language in which he composed through an intensive reading of his most famous poem, The Canterbury Tales. Focusing exclusively on the reading and interpretation of the stories that make up this unfinished medieval tale collection, this course operates in terms of some medieval scribal practices: copying, translating, memorizing, and glossing passages as part of a classroom commentary tradition. Rehearsing some of these original practices in our post-modern classroom, we will investigate the clerical, courtly, and intellectual culture in and about which Chaucer writes in both serious and comic forms.

In reading Chaucer’s story collection, we will pay particular attention to the medieval veneration of “old bookes,” noting throughout the semester the various ways Chaucer’s “book” looks toward and depends upon other texts for its significance. We will also perform some book veneration of our own by visiting the HRC, where we will see medieval manuscripts of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the flesh – literally, on the vellum (sheepskin) on which they were written – and in facsimile as we work to recapture something of late medieval textual culture before the advent of print. We will also take some time to look at the transmission and development of Chaucer’s works by looking at translations, popular serializations, and adaptations of the Canterbury Tales in modern culture.

Texts: Required: The Canterbury Tales, complete. Ed. Larry D. Benson, et. al. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

Helen Cooper, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. 2nd ed. OUP, 1996.

Requirements & Grading: Three in-class examinations: 20% each; Final Examination: 30%; Class preparation and participation (including any in-class assignments): 10%.

This course addresses the “works” of the medieval poet in the earliest days of print culture. Beginning with a reading of Troilus and Criseyde, the most famous English literary romance before the sixteenth century, we will study the various apocryphal poems attached to Chaucer’s Workes beginning in 1532.  Starting with Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid, we will read those texts that continued, imitated, and pretended to be Chaucer’s own in the ever growing, “newly emprinted” Renaissance editions of Thynne, Speght, and Stow.

Some issues: the “dull” 15th century; the rise of the early modern book; formal features and changing paratextual design in the Renaissance book; literary paternity (anxiety); modernization and antiquarian language; new dictionaries; printers and publishers in the early modern book trade

Given these concerns, we will spend some time in the HRC with the Renaissance editions of Chaucer and researching the various individuals concerned with their production

Some texts:  Troilus and Criseyde; Testament of Cresseid; Dreme of Chaucer; King’s Quair; Assembly of Ladies; Plowman’s Tale; Seige of Thebes; Tale of Beryn

Course requirements:  short reader’s response (20%); annotated bibliography (20%); 20-25 pp research paper (50%); full and consistent classroom participation, including presentation (10%)

Course pre-requisites:  none. But it would help if students had read Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and Troilus and Criseyde before class begins.  We will not read the Knight’s Tale as part of the course, but some of the “additional” material to the Canterbury Tales takes it for granted that the audience knows the plot of this story and how it continues the narrative.  We will read Troilus over a few weeks in class, but that reading will be deeper and richer if students have already been able to go over the story at least once, for plot if for nothing else.

Instructor:  Scala, E            Areas:  -- / B

Unique #:  34950            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Spring 2013            Restrictions:  English Honors

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: This course serves as an overview of the most important and influential works of the British literary and linguistic tradition from its beginnings through the 20th century. The course will be conducted in both lecture and discussion format, and the goal of the course will be “coverage”—a vast majority of students’ time will be devoted to reading and annotation. The course will make an effort to give students a coherent narrative of British literature from the earliest writings in English through the major periods and transitions. It will cover important writers, genres, and styles as they characterize those literary periods. This course will aim to provide the foundation for future study in English literature by enabling students to contextualize and relate to each other the specific upper-division classes in which they enroll.

Required Texts: Two-volume Norton Anthology of British Literature: Major Authors, packaged with Norton Critical Edition of Pride and Prejudice; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, Annotated; Alfred Hitchcock, dir.  Vertigo.

Requirements & Grading: 2 in-class examinations (25% each); final writing project (30%); class participation, preparation and quizzes (20%).

This course reads Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and excavates the contours of the critical field, with special emphasis on material since 1985.  Offering a deeper and more extensive reading of the tales than in most undergraduate courses, we will consider questions of genre, source, manuscript production as well as those topics that currently animate critical discussion of Chaucer, including: gender and sexuality; historicism and politic; psychology and character.

Instructor:  Scala, E            Areas:  n/a

Unique #:  35085            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Spring 2012            Restrictions:  English Honors

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Completion of at least thirty semester hours of coursework, including E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: This course serves as an overview of the most important and influential works of the British literary and linguistic tradition from its beginnings through the 20th century. The course will be conducted in both lecture and discussion format, and the goal of the course will be “coverage”—a vast majority of students’ time will be devoted to reading and annotation. The course will make an effort to give students a coherent narrative of British literature from the earliest writings in English through the major periods and transitions. It will cover important writers, genres, and styles as they characterize those literary periods. This course will aim to provide the foundation for future study in English literature by enabling students to contextualize and relate to each other the specific upper-division classes in which they enroll.

Required Texts: Two-volume Norton Anthology of British Literature: Major Authors, packaged with Norton Critical Edition of Pride and Prejudice; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, Annotated; Alfred Hitchcock, dir.  Vertigo.

Requirements & Grading: 2 in-class examinations (25% each); final writing project (30%); class participation, preparation and quizzes (20%).

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: This course serves as an introduction to one of the three most important poets in the English tradition—Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton—and the earlier form of the English language in which he composed through an intensive reading of his most famous poem, The Canterbury Tales. Focusing exclusively on the reading and interpretation of the stories that make up this unfinished medieval tale collection, this course operates in terms of some medieval scribal practices: copying, translating, memorizing, and glossing passages as part of a classroom commentary tradition. Rehearsing some of these original practices in our post-modern classroom, we will investigate the clerical, courtly, and intellectual culture in and about which Chaucer writes in both serious and comic forms.

In reading Chaucer’s story collection, we will pay particular attention to the medieval veneration of “old bookes,” noting throughout the semester the various ways Chaucer’s “book” looks toward and depends upon other texts for its significance. We will also perform some book veneration of our own by visiting the HRC, where we will see medieval manuscripts of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the flesh – literally, on the vellum (sheepskin) on which they were written – and in facsimile as we work to recapture something of late medieval textual culture before the advent of print. We will also take some time to look at the transmission and development of Chaucer’s works by looking at translations, popular serializations, and adaptations of the Canterbury Tales in modern culture. 

Texts: Required: The Canterbury Tales, complete. Ed. Larry D. Benson, et. al. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

either: Derek Pearsall, The Canterbury Tales. Routledge, 1994, 1996

or: Helen Cooper, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. 2nd ed. OUP, 1996.

Requirements & Grading: Three in-class examinations: 20% each; Final Examination: 30%; Class preparation and participation (including any in-class assignments): 10%.

E 376L (Topic: Chaucer and Shakespeare) may not also be counted.

Course Description: This course investigates the textual relations between two of the foundational writers in English literary history, Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare. Reading selections from the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde, we will look at the ways Chaucer’s poetry provided the source for a number of Shakespeare’s plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Troilus and Cressida, and Two Noble Kinsmen. But we will also look to other relations such as the comparative handling of genre (how was tragedy differently conceived for these writers), history (what were the Latin classics for the two poets) and subjectivity (how did they fashion a sense of intimate interiority). Examining the poems and plays closely, engaging with critical debate about the relation between the two writers, we will also look at the textual cultures in which these individuals wrote by examining original materials at the Humanities Research Center, including medieval manuscripts of Chaucer’s poetry and the edition of Chaucer that Shakespeare likely read.

Texts: The Riverside Chaucer, or The Canterbury Tales, Complete and Troilus and Criseyde; A Midsummer Night’s Dream (all Arden editions of the plays); Two Noble Kinsmen; Troilus and Cressida; Romeo and Juliet; Hamlet.

Grading: Writing Assignments, 20%; Research Group Work, 20%; Final Research Essay, 50%; Classroom performance, 10%.

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

This course introduces students to a variety of current issues, topics, and methodologies in medieval English studies.  Working across Old and Middle English genres, the course will include presentations from various resident and visiting faculty on their particular areas of expertise and current research. 

Readings

During the semester we will focus our attention on four important texts spanning the “medieval period” as broadly conceived and its various genres: Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, a text bordering the classical and medieval periods that was translated by King Alfred into Old English, by Chaucer into Middle English and by Elizabeth I into Early Modern English; the French Romance of the Rose, also partially translated by Chaucer; the Middle English Pearl; and Walter Hilton’s “best-seller,” Scala Perfectionis.  These texts are in differing and overlapping ways central to medieval English literary studies but are seldom encountered in most regularly organized courses, even at an advanced level.  Supplementing our reading of these larger works will be a number of shorter primary texts (selected lyrics from the Harley 2253 ms, Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, the Life of St. Katherine) as well as the canonical Piers Plowman, and a number of critical and theoretical essays to provoke our discussion throughout the semester.

Description: This course serves as an introduction to one of the three most important poets in the English tradition—Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton—and the earlier form of the English language in which he composed through an intensive reading of his most famous poem, The Canterbury Tales.  Focusing exclusively on the reading and interpretation of the stories that make up this unfinished medieval tale collection, this course operates in terms of some medieval scribal practices:  copying, translating, memorizing, and glossing passages as part of a classroom commentary tradition.  Rehearsing some of these original practices in our post-modern classroom, we will investigate the clerical, courtly, and intellectual culture in and about which Chaucer writes in both serious and comic forms.

In reading Chaucer’s story collection, we will pay particular attention to the medieval veneration of “old bookes,” noting throughout the semester the various ways Chaucer’s “book” looks toward and depends upon other texts for its significance.  We will also perform some book veneration of our own by visiting the HRC, where we will see medieval manuscripts of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the flesh – literally, on the vellum (sheepskin) on which they were written – and in facsimile as we work to recapture something of late medieval textual culture before the advent of print.  We will also take some time to look at the transmission and development of Chaucer’s works by looking at translations, popular serializations, and adaptations of the Canterbury Tales in modern culture.

Requirements:  Reading Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales requires learning Middle English, and much of the first few class periods will be devoted to acquiring the necessary language skills.  Therefore attendance, preparation, and participation are not simply recommended but mandatory. All readings below are from the course’s required text, The Canterbury Tales: Complete, ed. Larry D. Benson (Houghton Mifflin, 2000) available at the University Co-Op.  An introductory text on the Canterbury Tales  by Derek Pearsall or by Helen cooper is also required reading (see which one is avaialbe at teh Co-op).  Also available for order from me, CD’s of the individual tales. Most cost $10.  I will place an order during the second week of class.  You may order as many as you like, but I recommend that you get at least one to help you with Middle English pronunciation, which in turn will help your reading comprehension generally.

Grading:

There will be three exams (worth 20%) each and a final (worth 30%). The remaining 10% will be comprised of a score on your preparation and participation.  We will work on various in class assignments, which may be collected and marked as part of this grade.

Schedule of Classes:

Tu. 1/19                        Introduction—The most famous opening sentence in English literature

Th. 1/21                        General Prologue

Tu. 1/26                        General Prologue

Th. 1/28                        General Prologue

Tu. 2/2                        Knight’s Tale (part 1)

Th.  2/4                         Knight’s Tale (part 2-3)

Tu. 2/9                        Knight’s Tale

Th. 2/11                         Examination #1           

Tu. 2/16                        Miller’s Tale           

Th. 2/18                        Miller’s Tale

Tu. 2/23                        Reeve’s Tale           

Th. 2/25                        Reeve’s Tale and Cook’s Tale

Tu. 3/2                        Examination #2

Th. 3/4                        Wife of Bath’s Prologue

Tu. 3/9                        Wife of Bath’s Prologue

Th. 3/11                        Wife of Bath’s Tale

Tu. 3/16                        SPRING BREAK

Th. 3/18                       

Tu. 3/23                        Clerk’s Tale           

Th. 3/25                        Clerk’s Tale                       

Tu. 3/30                        Merchant’s Tale

Th. 4/1                        Franklin’s Tale

Tu. 4/6                        Franklin’s Tale

Th. 4/8                        Examination # 3

Tu. 4/13                        Pardoner’s Tale

Th. 4/15                        Pardoner’s Tale

Tu. 4/20                        Prioress’s Tale

Th. 4/22                        Nun’s Priest’s Tale

Tu. 4/27                        Nun’s Priest’s Tale

Th. 4/29                        Manciple’s Tale   

Tu. 5/4                        Parson’s Prologue and Retraction           

Th.5/6                                    FINAL EXAMINATION           

Classroom Policies: Though not a writing flag course, this is an upper-division, reading-intensive English course.  I expect students to attend class every time, to have a copy of the Canterbury Tales with them, and to have prepared the material on the syllabus for that day.  If you will be absent for any reason, I would appreciate an email letting me know.  Three absences  (or 10% of our scheduled meetings) will result in a course grade deduction by 10 points—a full letter grade Each absence thereafter will reduce the grade by another five points.  

The grade scale for the course will be as follows. Grades are not automatically rounded up:

100-95 A; 94.99-90 A-; 89.99-86 B+; 85.99-83 B; 82.99-80 B-; 79.99-76 C+; 75.99-73 C; 72.99-70 C-; 69.99-65 D; 64.99 and below F.

The University of Texas at Austin provides upon request appropriate academic accommodations for qualified students with disabilities. For more information, contact the Office of the Dean of Students at 471-6259, 471-4641 TTY.

TBD