Paper 1

In a paper of approximately 750 words (3 pages, double-spaced, 10 -12 point font), respond to one of the following prompts. My page limits are minimums not maximums so you can write more than 3 pages without any penalty. The topics below are pretty dense and it would not surprise me if many of you find you need four pages rather than three to fully complete your analysis.

PROMPTS

  Analyze two of Chaucer’s women characters as a way of examining how he shows women competing with men for power and influence. Given the disadvantages women faced in the Middle Ages (very little access to education or jobs, frequently prevented from owning or inheriting property), how do Chaucer’s female characters manage to get ahead in the world? How do they use techniques that can be associated with successful business practices even if their modes of competing with men are not the norm today? Why do you think Chaucer does not condemn his women characters even when they are unscrupulous? Be sure to quote specific passages from two tales to support your ideas (this can include the Wife of Bath’s Prologue).

SOME ADVICE FOR WRITING PAPERS ON LITERATURE

Do not waste time with a general introduction, instead start with your argument or main idea. For example, you could say something like this: “In this paper I will discuss how the Wife of Bath’s conception of marriage is based on mutual respect.”  Then analyze her description of her 5 marriages focusing on details that seem significant for the points you want to make. Keep in mind that your paper should present an interpretation of a tale or cluster of tales. This means you’ll be making an assertion about a specific tale or character in a tale using the prompt you’ve chosen as a guide for arriving at your interpretation. Assertions are statements which present a hypothesis about the meaning behind a particular tale or character.  Because it’s a hypothesis you’ll need evidence to back up your assertion. In a paper like this, your data is the story itself so you’ll need to use brief quotations to back up your ideas. You also want to make sure that parts of the story do not contradict the point you’re making. One strategy that can be useful in dealing with stories that present more than one point of view is to present an interpretation that seems convincing but turns out not to be on further investigation. For example, you could say that the Wife of Bath’s description of her first 3 marriages leads us to think that she sees marriage only in terms of fighting with her husbands so that she can squeeze more money out of them. However, her description of her fifth marriage suggests a very different idea of marriage. Though it also involves a fight, the Wife’s description of her marriage to Jenkin eventually presents a marriage grounded in compromise, love, and respect. This philosophy is also backed up by the ending of her actual tale. This idea is your thesis or main hypothesis and you’ll need to look over her prologue and the ending of her tale in order to come up with evidence for your ideas.  Remember that a thesis cannot be just a description of something that all readers would agree about. It needs to be a statement that has the potential for debate or disagreement. The key element here is that you have to be confident that the evidence for your thesis is strong enough to overcome the disagreement. So it’s always a good idea to subject your thesis to some testing. Try to think of counter-arguments for your idea and look for evidence for them. If you find passages that contradict your thesis, then it may be time to do some rethinking. 

If you’re feeling confused about any of this, please email me a short description of what you plan to write on and what your main idea is. I’ll be able to tell you very quickly whether you have a workable thesis or not and that can save you a lot of trouble! (d.gambera@utah.edu)

GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR PAPERS FOR THIS CLASS

• Papers should be double-spaced (this means no more than 3 lines per inch), in a readable font no larger than 12 point, with one-inch margins all around.  Keep a copy of the file just in case Canvas has a glitch and your paper does not appear. 
• Include a title at the top of your paper. It should indicate what your paper is about and not just give the title of the story you’re writing on. Here’s an example: “Ethical Business Practices and the Pardoner”
• When you’re quoting from Chaucer, give line numbers. Note the proper order of punctuation marks:

Chaucer describes spring as the time when people like to go on pilgrimages:

“Then people think of holy pilgrimages/ Pilgrims dream of setting foot in far off/ lands, or

worship at distant shrines” (11-13).  

[Note the parentheses with the line numbers and the period come after the quotation marks.]

Be sure you show line breaks by using a slash at the end of each line as you see above. Or if you’re quoting more than 3 lines at a time, go ahead and indent your quotation 10 spaces and type the lines as they appear on the page. It should look like this:

                        “Good fortune smiles on each one here

                        To ride with me, a pardoner,

                        Who can absolve you as we go.

                        Death strikes us when it will, you know!” (603-606)

• If you quote from any other text or translation, you’ll need to provide full bibliographic information (and check with me first anyway).  If your argument draws in any substantial way on secondary material you’ve read, you’ll need to signal this with a footnote or parenthetical citation.  If you’re not sure whether you need to acknowledge a debt, go ahead and do it.  If you’re unclear about the form, or a doubtful case arises, see me or just attach a little note explaining the problem.
• Computer spell-checkers and thesauruses may occasionally help you catch a typo or remember a synonym, but should never be relied on as authoritative: you will need to proofread with your own eyes and consult a good dictionary.
• Chaucer’s pilgrim storytellers do not have proper names so you should capitalize the profession of each pilgrim since that functions as their name: the Knight, the Miller, the Shipman, the Franklin, the Wife of Bath, etc . . . However, if you’re writing about a profession in one of the tales, then do not capitalize the category. For example, the miller in the Reeve’s tale is not capitalized (but he does have a name, Symkin), and the summoner in the Friar’s tale should also be spelled with a small “s”. So, too, the Clerk is a pilgrim/narrator, but there are also a number of stories which feature clerks (written with a small “c”), and the same goes for the Merchant (pilgrim) and merchants (characters in stories such as the Shipman’s Tale). 

 Teacher’s comment:

I read your paper and I have some suggestions. Do not write on the Prioress or the Second Nun because we did not discuss them in class and they are not part of the writing assignment. And you have not understood what Chaucer is saying about these two characters. But you can write on the Wife of Bath and use some of the same ideas in your paper. The Wife of Bath asserts herself against male dominance by forcing her first three husbands to leave her their money and property and then, when her fifth husband, Jenkin, reads to her in a book that is full of antifeminist stories which accuse women of great evil, she finally gets angry and tears some pages from the book. This leads to a fight and then to a reconciliation in which Jenkin agrees to burn the book of stories about bad women and to treat her with respect. The Wife also agrees to treat him with respect and then they have a more harmonious relationship. To explain these ideas you should quote lines from the Wife of Bath’s prologue, particularly from the last section where she and Jenkin fight about the book of stories and then come to an agreement to destroy it (see pages 127-128).  You also should quote some examples of how she gets her first 3 husbands to give her money earlier in her prologue (see page 115).