Professor Marie Nelson
4348 Turlington
e-mail: mnelson@lin.ufl.edu

CHAUCER / CHAUCER'S WOMEN  Spring 2000 ENL 4311 (Section 4243X) and WST 3930 Chaucer's Women -- who were they? and where did they come from? Everyone knows the Wife of Bath, successful businesswoman, world traveller, a woman on the lookout for a possible sixth husband, but do you know about her predecessor, Dame Sirith, who tricked a young wife into a fall from virtue? or Margery Kempe, her real-life counterpart who embarked on religious pilgrimages for religious reasons? Anyone who ever met Alisoun of Chaucer's Miller's Tale in a sophomore survey class is likely to remember her, but seeing her alongside her counterpart in Boccaccio's Decameron may make the reasons she is memorable more apparent. And how about the long-suffering patient Griselda, the woman no modern woman would want to be? Griselda has counterparts in the Decameron and in one of Christine de Pizan's stories of virtuous women, and she lives again in a twentieth-century sociology text, of all places. Chaucer / Chaucer's Women is intended to make the lives of these and other women, many of which are drawn from the legendary past shared by Chaucer and Christine de Pizan, accessible to twenty-first century readers. We will be using just three basic texts: E.C. Cawley's paperback edition of the Canterbury Tales, Sarah Lawson's recently published translation of Christine's Treasure of the City of Ladies, and my Chaucer's Women, which will provide the basic structure for our course. As the Chaucer's Women Table of Contents presented below will indicate, our course will begin with consideration of the roles Chaucer played in some of his short poems and end with three judgmental perspectives from which his characters' lives can be viewed. This Table of Contents should also suggest the degree to which writing assignments are built into the course. These assignments will, for the most part, be quite short "starts" intended to serve as possible beginnings for the three 2-5 page papers required for the course.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. ESTABLISHING A CONTEXT

INTRODUCTION

SHORT POEMS 1
• Lenvoy de Chaucer a Bukton 3
• Lenvoy de Chaucer a Scogan 4
• Chaucer's Words unto Adam, His Owne Scriveyn 5
• To Adam: Notes toward an Interpretion 6
• The Complaynt of Chaucer to his Purse 7
• Establishing a Context: A Writing Exercise 8


THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS

• Narrative Structure of the Book of the Duchess 9
• Selections from the Book of the Duchess 10


THE STORY OF MARGERY KEMPE

• From The Book of Margery Kempe 13
• Two Interpretive Perspectives 16


FROM THE HOUSEHOLDER OF PARIS'S GUIDEBOOK 19

THE PATRIARCHY SPEAKS: VOICES OF THE ANTI-FEMINISTS 24

HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 29


II. THE WIFE OF BATH: A CENTER OF CRITICAL INTEREST

A Summary of John Gower's Tale of Florent (Writing Exercise) 30
Twentieth-Century Perspectives (Writing Exercise) 32


III. FABLIAUX PARALLELS

An Ozark Parallel to the Miller's Tale 34
Writing Exercise 34
The Miller and the Two Clerks: A French Parallel to the Reeve's Tale35
A Shipman's Tale Parallel from Boccaccio's Decameron 43
A Merchant's Tale Parallel from Boccaccio's Decameron 45
Woman as Asset, Woman as Liability: Questions for Consideration 52


IV. SHIFTING TO A HIGHER PLANE

Introduction 53
An ABC 54
Legal Terms in Chaucer's ABC Poem 59
Notes on "equity" from Hornsby, Chaucer and the Law 60
Julian of Norwich's View of Judgment 61
The Patient Griselda Speaks (in Petrarch's Version of the Story) 62
The Goodman of Paris, on the Story of Griselda 64
From Boccaccio's Decameron, the Tenth Tale of the Tenth Day 65
A Twentieth-Century Parallel to the Story of Patient Griselda 72
A Franklin's Tale Parallel from the Decameron 75
And all was for an appil 78


V. LEGENDS OF GOOD WOMEN: TEXTS FOR COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS*

Christine De Pizan's Framing Narrative 79
Chaucer's Framing Narrative: Prologue for Penance? 79
THE STORY OF THISBE
• Christine De Pizan 84
• Chaucer 85
THE STORY OF DIDO
• Christine De Pizan 91
• Chaucer 92
THE STORY OF HYPSIPYLE
• Christine De Pizan 103
• Chaucer 104
THE STORY OF MEDEA
• Christine De Pizan 109
• Chaucer 110
THE STORY OF LUCRECE
• Christine De Pizan 113
• Chaucer 114
Selections from Lemprière's Classical Dictionary of Proper Names 119


VI. TALKING BIRDS

The Merchant and His Magpie 125
The Parlement of Foules (Selected Speeches) 127


VII. BACK TO HUMAN BEHAVIOR

It Served the Bastards Right 138
The Black Death: Boccaccio's Framing Narrative 140
Fourteenth-Century Descriptions of the Black Death 142
Looking Back from the Parson's Perspective (Writing Exercise) 144
From the Art of Courtly Love, by Andreas Capellanus 147
Christine De Pizan's Rules for Human Behavior (Writing Exercise) 151


*Please note that additions to this series will be made available through Library West's reserve reading services. Additions will consist mainly of translations of Chaucer's versions of the stories included in READINGS PART V, LEGENDS OF GOOD WOMEN: TEXTS FOR COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS. Included, in addition, will be Chaucer's story of PHILOMELA, accompanied by a translation of Ovid's story of TEREUS, PROCNE, AND PHILOMELA, and a selection from John Gardner's translation of the JASON AND MEDEA story. The last item, a transformation rather than a translation, can serve as a "start" for one of the writing assignments for the GOOD WOMEN section of READINGS. Included also are Chaucer-Christine- Lemprière parallels for THISBE, DIDO, HYPSIPYLE, MEDEA, and LUCRECE, and Chaucer-Ovid-Lemprière parallels for PHILOMELA.

QUESTIONS ABOUT CHAUCER / CHAUCER'S WOMEN?

Please e-mail me. My address is mnelson@lin.ufl.edu
or snail mail me at:

Dr. Marie Nelson
English Department
P.O. Box 117310
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-7310