ENGL71802 

This course is taught by several members of staff in EAS. It begins by examining, in the first three weeks, the five books of Geoffrey Chaucer's major early work, Troilus and Criseyde. We will read the poem closely and discussion will cover critical issues and also raise any linguistic problems, with the aim of completing a detailed reading of the poem at the end of week three. 

Attention then shifts to the late fourteenth-century context of the power and a discussion of Gower and Dante (Prof. Jeremy Tambling). We will then spend a session in the John Rylands Library on Deansgate looking at relevant early printed materials. 

Next, we proceed to the text's literary afterlives, considering the ‘sequels': Henryson's The Testament of Cresseid, the anonymous Laste Epistle of Creseyd to Troyalus, Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and Dryden's adaptation with the same title (Jackie Pearson and Jerome de Groot). In the final section of the course, we then consider ways in which the poem has been read and can be read by looking first at nineteenth- and early twentieth-century reception with a particular focus on Kittredge's 1915 reading of Troilus. Later sessions will focus on a major critical/theoretical intervention, including exegetics, formalism, feminism/gender, and historical materialism. In the final week students will offer their own readings in short presentations. 

Assessment: Coursework, 6000 words 

Primary texts:

Stephen A. Barney, Troilus and Criseyde by Chaucer (Norton, 2006)

Robert L. Kindrick, ed. The Poems of Robert Henryson. Kalamazoo: TEAMS, 1997 (see: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/testfram.htm).

Secondary reading:

*David Aers, “Criseyde: Woman in Medieval Society.” Chaucer Review 13 (1979):177-200; rpt in Benson, below.

C. David Benson, ed. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. London: Unwin Hyman, 1990.

*Carolyn Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics. Madison: U of Wisconsin Press, 1989.

*E. Talbot Donaldson, Chaucer's Poetry: An Anthology for the Modern Reader. New York: Ronald, 1958.

Alice R. Kaminsky, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and the Critics. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1980.

*G.L. Kittredge, Chaucer and His Poetry. 1915; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1970.

Seth Lerer, Courtly Letters in the Age of Henry VIII. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

*Charles Muscatine, Chaucer and the French Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1957.

Barbara Nolan, Chaucer and the Tradition of the Roman Antique. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.

*Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History. Madison: U of Wisconsin Press, 1991.

*D. W. Robertson, A Preface to Chaucer. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1963.

A.C. Spearing, Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde. London: Edward Arnold, 1976.

Winthrop Wetherbee, Chaucer and the Poets. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1984.

B.A. Windeatt, Troilus and Criseyde. Oxford Guides to Chaucer. Oxford: OUP, 1992.

*I will be providing a booklet with the asterisked critical reading in December