600-Level Courses
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608- Chaucer, T 1830
Amy Vines
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
This course is devoted to Chaucer’s best known work: The Canterbury Tales. Special attention will be paid to the tensions between the various cultural practices represented in the pilgrims’ Tales and their interactions with one another in the context of late fourteenth-century England. In addition, we will also examine The Canterbury Tales as an innovative anthology of medieval literary genres and consider how our modern ways of dealing with these cultural and social struggles and modern textual praxis can help us to read and understand this medieval masterpiece. We will read this text in the original Middle English, carefully working our way through the tales. We will also engage with both the recent and more traditional critical perspectives brought to bear on the Tales, such as Marxist criticism, cultural studies, post-coloniality, gender and queer studies, and manuscript studies. No prior knowledge of Middle English is required for this course; however, by the end of the semester, you will be able to read Chaucer’s language with fluency.
623- Writing-Advanced: Nonfiction, W 1830
Michael Parker
626- Fiction Workshop, R 1400
Holly Goddard Jones
627- Poetry Workshop, R 1400
Rebecca Black
682- The Structure of Verse, T 1400
David Roderick
683- Women's Rhetoric and Feminist Pedagogy, T 1830
Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater
693- Classical Rhetoric, R 1830
Walter Beale
In this seminar we will survey the origins, developments, and competing views of rhetoric in classical antiquity; and also the influence of the classical tradition upon theory, teaching, and rhetorical practice in three self-conscious revivals of rhetoric: in the European Renaissance; in eighteenth century England; and in twentieth century America. In addition to our review of basic texts, we will focus upon three historical topics in particular: the complex relations of oral and written discourse; the intertwined development of rhetorical theory and literary theory; and the practical and cultural aims of rhetorical pedagogy in different historical periods (including our own). The major course project will be an essay/conference presentation on one of these topics.
This course is designed for students with specializations in literature and literary theory as well as in rhetoric and composition studies. Because for most participants it will be an introductory course, more class time will be devoted to lecture/discussion that in many graduate seminars. However, I will ask for weekly/reflections on particular secondary readings, most of them to be posted on Blackboard, and there will be some oral reports in the last third of the semester.