ENGL 511
Dr. Koster

ENGL 511
Writing a Paper about Chaucer

Your syllabus requires you to write a significant critical essay for this course (7-10 pages for undergraduates, 12-15 pages for graduate students) on a topic of your choosing. I am very open to a wide range of topics on a wide variety of works in medieval literature, so please pick something that interests you and that engages your attention and intellect. The following guidelines will help you plan that paper. You should be thinking about topics that might make good conference paper presentations. These are formal scholarly essays that would be suitable for reading at a scholarly conference or publication in an appropriate journal. Conference papers are usually ten to twelve double-spaced pages (2500-3000 words) exclusive of documentation and should take about 20 minutes to read aloud. Your papers must have a critical (i.e. argumentative) slant, involve close analysis of the text(s) you work with, and show familiarity with the scholarly issues and discussion already published on the subject you have chosen.

There are many possible approaches to writing about medieval literature; what follows is an overview of two kinds of approaches that seem to work most successfully. You must discuss your paper topic with me by April 5*; the paper itself is due no later than April 24 in class, though it is always welcome earlier. Wise students use the Writing Center (x-2138) to help them make these papers as excellent as they can be. I am always happy to discuss outlines and drafts of your papers with you.  No paper will be graded until its final copy is submitted to www.turnitin.com. We will have draft conferences on these papers the week of April 17.

*By this date we need to discuss your idea for your paper in some detail. Bring with you a paragraph that should contain, if not a thesis statement, the question at issue you are going to wrestle with. Something like "I want to write about The Wife of Bath" is not specific enough--by this point you should be able to say something like "I want to write about how the Wife of Bath uses traditional rhetorical forms to attack men." Your bibliography may vary in length but I will expect at least half a dozen entries, with a brief (3-4 sentence) annotation of each. These items should be in MLA form and listed alphabetically as they would appear in a Works Cited list.

Whichever approach you choose, you should begin by carefully examining the notes and mini-bibliographies in your textbook for the character or tale you're writing about. Next, you need to make sure that you are actually writing a critical paper, and not a descriptive one or a summation of your source material. This means the paper must make an argument, not simply summarize what other people have said about your question. It must have a clear thesis, and plenty of concrete support, both from the primary work(s) and from appropriate sources of secondary scholarship. Make sure all sources you use (whether quoted, paraphrased, or summarized) are introduced with appropriate signal phrases and attribution and are properly documented in MLA style. I will be happy to answer any questions you have about MLA documentation.

The MLA online bibliography is available through the Dacus library web page (http://www.winthrop.edu/dacus) and will help you find secondary sources. For medieval sources, especially anonymous texts, you may find it easier to search by the name of the work rather than the author. You may wish to use online sources such as the Labyrinth, Luminarium, Online Reference Book (ORB) or Voice of the Shuttle, all available through the "resources" button on the class web page, to supplement your research in journals and books.

There are two specialized Chaucer bibliographies online. The Essential Chaucer is a selective, annotated bibliography of Chaucer studies from 1900-1984. It was first published in 1987 by G. K. Hall and Mansell Publishers Limited, and now exists online at http://colfa.utsa.edu/chaucer/, thanks to Mark Allen of the University of Texas at San Antonio. The Studies in the Age of Chaucer bibliography, also edited by Allen, covers Chaucerian scholarship since 1975 and is very, very comprehensive; access it at http://uchaucer.utsa.edu.

There are a number of bibliography sites available; the fastest way to access these is through the Chaucer Metapage at UNC Chapel Hill: http://www.unc.edu/depts/chaucer/chbib.htm

Now, what do you write your paper on?

1. RESPOND TO A CRITIC

Choose a critical controversy about a character or work, find a critic with whom you disagree or want to question, and respond to his or her position using a close study of the individual text and any secondary reading you have conducted. For instance, what do you think is going on with the Pardoner? Various critics recently have seen him as a symbol of spiritual sterility, a mouthpiece for Chaucer's repressed homosocial desires, or as a wickedly funny satirist. What do you think? If you come across a critic who also disagrees with your adversary's opinions, you may borrow those counter-arguments to supplement your own (be sure to cite all borrowed ideas), but make sure you exercise your own judgment. This should not be a summary of two opposing critics' positions; rather, use their disagreement to set up your argument. (You're the lawyer, so you make the case; the various critics are your witnesses, both supporting and opposing.)

2. THEMATIC/INTERPRETATIVE QUESTION

Choose a single tale or work (or at most, compare two works) and ask a particular, pointed question about it: for instance, what is Chaucer's attitude to courtly love in The Knight's Tale? To what extent does Boethius inform Troilus and Criseyde? Then try to answer it, exploring the many possible answers that most good questions have. Use the sources you find to support your answer, as you would use witnesses when making a case in a court trial; don’t turn the paper into a collection of ‘Crane says...’ and ‘Shoaf says...’ and ‘Carruthers says...’ paragraphs that aren’t supporting some point you want to make. (Rule of thumb: you want the grade, you make the case.) Cchoose a thesis that lends itself to focused discussion. "Chaucer the Feminist" is a book; ‘The Roles of Damsels in Distress in the Marriage Group" is a paper topic. I will expect you to discuss some primary works of literature in detail; no papers without direct quotes!

Remember, too, the distinction between a descriptive thesis "Women play three principal roles in The Canterbury Tales" and a critical thesis: "The three kinds of roles assigned to female characters in the Canterbury Tales point to the ambiguous status of women in late fourteenth century England." A critical thesis is generally necessary for a critical paper. Hint, hint!