Chaucer
syllabus
1. Your thesis should make a clear textual claim (an observation
about the text ).
Example: In the Wife of Bath’s Tale, Chaucer sets the Wife up
in a seemingly contradictory position. She explicitly rejects the textual
authorities on marriage and embraces her own authority based on her experience
of five marriages; She then goes on to cite textual authorities throughout
her Prologue.
2. Your thesis should make a clear interpretive claim based on the
textual claim
Example: The Wife’s reliance on the citation of textual authorities
even though she explicitly rejects textual authority, specifically masculine,
clerical authority, can be viewed as reflecting the Wife’s inability to
claim real authority through experience or as reflecting the rhetorical
cunning of the Wife. In fact, her rhetorical stance against clerical authority
is actually strengthened by her subsequent citation of textual authority
because she disrupts the traditional meanings of those texts as she uses
them for her own means.
3. Your thesis should argue for the importance of your interpretation
and make a mapping claim giving an overview of the structure of your argument.
Example: That the Wife of Bath misquotes, misuses or misinterprets
the textual authorities she uses is a well-known feature of the Wife’s
Prologue. Claims have often been made that Chaucer paints the Wife as inconsistent,
ignorant, and disorganized in her arguments. However, recently more efforts
have been made to understand the Wife’s rhetorical style as more nuanced,
starting from the position that the Wife may be more skilled in debate
than critics have heretofore given her credit for. As a character that
remains disconcertingly subversive on the Canterbury pilgrimage, the Wife’s
use of textual authority needs more detailed examination. This essay will
argue that the Wife’s citation of authority in her Prologue purposefully
rejects traditional, often religious, textual interpretations to insert
commonsensical or folk-wisdom interpretations and that these new interpretations
undermine traditional authority through humorous criticism. I will discuss
in detail the Wife’s citations of the biblical stories of the Samaritan
woman, Abraham and Solomon.
Three Example Theses
Good: In this essay I will argue that The Wife of Bath’s Tale
raises questions about the importance of textual authority.
Better: In this essay I will argue that The Wife of Bath’s Tale
raises questions about the importance of textual authority by allowing
the Wife both to reject and make her own use of textual authority.
Most Specific: The Wife of Bath’s Tale confronts the issues
of clerical authority over women by allowing the Wife both to reject textual
authority and to undermine it at the same time. She explicitly claims she
doesn’t need it and then goes one to use it in a seemingly bumbling and
disorganized way, much as Chaucer’s own narratorial persona plays the role
of the hack poet or the literal reporter, in order to make subversive claims
while seeming not to.
You may want to make explicit claims about your use of theory or your methodology: Your claims, examples, etc. will often reveal your methodology—scholars often omit an explicit discussion of their methodology or theoretical lens. However, more and more scholars are making an effort to reveal their theoretical positions more explicitly in order to be clearer.
Pros&Cons of Making Explicit Theory Claims: