Elizabeth Scala

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.