Aims
This course aims to:
• assess modern critical approaches to relating medieval literature to its historical context
• examine medieval social theory and how it was used in contemporary literature
• ask whether literature offered a challenge to medieval social norms and ideas
Content
‘Justice demands that masters should rule over servants and that servants should be subject to their masters’, so said Chaucer’s contemporary Thomas Brinton, bishop of Rochester (1373-89). Such hierarchical views of society were the commonplace of late medieval thinkers. Whether expressed in terms of Aristotelian philosophy or of Christian theology, the assumption was that the cosmos, society, and the human body were all hierarchically arranged, with the higher elements of each ruling over the lower, for the good of all. To question against such inequality, whether between the social classes, estates or genders, was thus a sinful rebellion against the rightful order of the universe or the will of God. Such views were not only found in philosophical treatises or in clerical the sermons, but were also set out in works of imaginative literature, such as John Gower’s Vox Clamantis and Confessio Amantis, in which hierarchy, order, obedience, law, peace and charity were counterposed to rebellion disorder, chaos, injustice, violence and sin.
However, whether Chaucer’s works, particularly his Canterbury Tales, reproduced the ‘dominant ideology’ of the day has proved to be a more controversial issue. For some critics, Chaucer’s social outlook is very similar to Gower’s in calling for the estates that made up society to live in harmony with each other. Yet, others have stressed the potential of literature to contest, subvert or transcend received opinion and so provide a space for the expression of social dissidence. In particular, such an approach has often been applied to the Canterbury Tales, with the many competing voices of Chaucer’s pilgrims being read as calling the orthodox pieties of his age into question. In this course, we will examine debates about the meaning of texts such as Gower’s Confessio Amantis and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and, more generally, about the function of literature within medieval society and how we should go about relating to works of imaginative literature to their historical context.
Presentation of the course
Each of the sessions will be begin by setting out modern historical and critical debates about medieval views of society and about the ways in which such social ideology was put to work in late medieval poetry and imaginative literature. The aim of the course is to encourage students to engage in such debates for themselves, but this will only be possible if they have read the translations of the primary texts by Gower and Chaucer in advance.
Course sessions
1. Medieval Social Theory and Gower’s Confessio Amantis
This session will examine medieval justifications of social hierarchy, will look at how they are put to use in the ‘Prologue’ of Gower’s Confessio Amantis and will ask how useful Bakhtin’s concepts of ‘monologic’ and ‘dialogic’ works are for understanding medieval literature.
2. Reading Chaucer in Context
This session will set out the three main ways in which modern critics have sought to relate Chaucer’s work to its historical context and will use the ‘General Prologue’ of the Canterbury Tales as an example of these competing approaches.
3. Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity
This session will use the ‘Knight’s Tale’ to look at how, as a medieval Christian, Chaucer looked back on pagan Antiquity and will explore the ways in which he made use of Aristotelian ethics.
4. Chaucer and Philosophy
This session will use the ‘Knight’s Tale’ to discuss how Chaucer made use of contemporary views of the cosmos and how he put Boethian thought to work in his fiction about ancient Athens.
5. Chaucer and Medieval Views of Women
Medieval views of women were often misogynist in nature but there was also a medieval tradition of defending women against their critics. This session asks where Chaucer’s ‘Wife of Bath’s Prologue’ stands on the spectrum of medieval views about women’s ability to act morally and rationally.
Learning outcomes
You are expected to gain from this series of classroom sessions a greater understanding of the subject and of the core issues and arguments central to the course.
The learning outcomes for this course are:
• an understanding of medieval ideas about the cosmos, society and morality
• an appreciation of how medieval social theory and philosophy was put to work in imaginative literature
• a familiarity with modern debates about relating medieval literature to its historical context
Required reading for before the course
For session 1: Gower, John, ‘Prologue to the Confessio Amantis’. Available in translation in B. Gastle and C. Carter, eds, The Lover’s Confession: A Translation of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2024), pp. 1-19.
Available free, online at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/mip_teamsvaria/9/
For session 2: Chaucer, Geoffrey, ‘General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales’. *Available in translation in Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales, trans. Wright, David (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 1-22. Please bring this text to the seminar.
For session 3: Chaucer, Geoffrey, ‘The Knight’s Tale’. *Available in translation in Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales, trans. Wright, David (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 23-79. Please bring this text to the seminar.
For session 4: Chaucer, Geoffrey, ‘The Knight’s Tale’. *Available in translation in Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales, trans. Wright, David (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 23-79. Please bring this text to the seminar.
For session 5: Chaucer, Geoffrey, ‘The Prologue of the Wife of Bath’s Tale’. *Available in translation in Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales, trans. Wright, David (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 219-39. Please bring this text to the seminar.
