S. Delany
Spring 2003
We will read Chaucer's dream-visions in this course, rather than the better-known "realistic" longer work. The dream-visions include a short portion of the great, influential French encyclopedic Romance of the Rose thought to have been translated by Chaucer; his darkly comic elegy of love and loss among the nobility, The Book of the Duchess; his deeply skeptical exploration of human communication in The House of Fame; the wryly satirical Parliament of Fowls; and the challenging Prologue to The Legend of Good Women with its intensely self-aware poetic credo. We will begin with medieval dream-theory (short texts distributed in the first class) in order to understand the conventions and literary advantages of the dream-vision genre.
Work of the course will include reading and translating texts in class, as well as discussion of the texts. You will find your reading fluency in Chaucer's relatively easy Middle English dialect quite adequate in about three weeks.
Credit or standing in two 100-division English courses and two 200-division English courses, one of which must be Engl. 204 or 205. Recommended: ENGL 204.
H. Phillips and N. Havely, eds., Chaucer's dream poetry
25% - Attendance, participation
50% - Three short (5 pages)papers @16.6%
25% - Final examination
Note: If you have taken 306 with Canterbury Tales only and are
interested in this course,
please see the English Department advisor.