7/29/2019 Chaucer Essay Qs for Student Use

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POSSIBLE TOPICS FOR MA QUESTIONS ON CHAUCER

1. The stories in Chaucers Canterbury Tales take on unexpected meanings and profundity when they

are attached to the particular characters who tell them. Do you agree? Illustrate from two of the

Canterbury Tales.

2. While Chaucers tales are assigned to appropriate tellers, in the end the tales are shaped by

Chaucer himself. Discuss with reference to at least two tales.

3. The Millers Tale seems to articulate a world of perfect moral sense Is this really so?

4. The Millers Tale is an entertaining story with no serious purpose or larger vision. Do you agree?

5. The Millers Tale may feature lower-class characters but only an educated readership could fully

appreciate the sophistication of Chaucers narrative techniques in this fabliau.

6. Do you accept the critical view that the narrator of the General Prologue is a persona, Chaucer the

Pilgrim, a sort of moral idiot, not to be trusted (Moseley)?

7. In the General Prologue Chaucer encourages us to make moral assessments of the characters but

simultaneously makes us aware of the many conflicting criteria that make rigid and narrow judgements

impossible. Discuss.

8. The importance of the pilgrimage framework to the Canterbury Tales.

9. The pilgrimage framework allows Chaucer... to raise throughout the book important questions about

the truth and value of fiction. Elaborate.

10. Ideal characters, and their function in the General Prologue.

11.Chaucers ironic methods in the General Prologue.

12. The method of the General Prologue is designed to give the impression of an absence of method.Comment on Chaucers technique in the light of this remark.

13. The importance of Harry Bailly.

14. In the Pardoners Tale, how do you interpret the figure of the Old Man? Do you agree with the critic

who said the Old Mans appearance seems unnecessarily expanded and obtrusive?

15. Analyse the ironies of the Pardoners Tale. Does the retelling of his regular sermon in a new context

notably affect its meaning, in your view?

16. The Pardoners Tale contains an accurate account of the Pardoners own spiritual condition, but it

is one that he is himself apparently incapable of reading. Discuss.

17. The Pardoners sexuality and its significance.

18. The substitution of physical for spiritual runs through the [Pardoners] tale. Elaborate.

19. The Pardoner does not see that his sermon is about sin and death, not avarice, as he thinks. Do

you agree?

20. The theme of death in the Pardoners Tale.

21. Most pilgrims cant grasp fully the significance of their own tales. Illustrate with reference to two of

the Canterbury Tales.

22. How does the Hosts idea of the story-telling competition (in the General Prologue) make a

difference to the way we read the Canterbury Tales that follow?

7/29/2019 Chaucer Essay Qs for Student Use

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23. The Nuns Priests Tale is a tale that defines mock-heroic man rather thoroughly, through the words

of the cock and hen, the cock and the fox, and the Nuns Priest (Paul R. Thomas.) What is it telling us

about man?

24. The Old Man (of the Pardoners Tale) is another representation of the Pardoner himself, his

anguished knowledge of his own fragmentariness (flesh, blood, skin) his desire for redemption, his wish

to be reabsorbed in the mother. (Dinshaw)

25. Chaucers narrators, including Chaucer the Pilgrim have a limited understanding of their material;

we, the readers, see more than they do. Do you agree? Discuss with reference to any two of Chaucers

texts prescribed.

26. The official destination of the Canterbury pilgrimage is the shrine to Thomas Becket, but its point

of departure is the commercial world of Harry Baillys tavern. (Eberle). Do Chaucers reminders of the

commercial world affect our judgment of the religious devotion of the characters of the General

Prologue? Discuss.

27. ...[The General Prologue] in establishing the figure of the persona ... alerts us to the questions that

are to be discussed of the nature and status of fiction and the poets art, the necessity and yet the

impossibility of judgment... (Moseley). Comment.

28. The General Prologue often gives us a glimpse of new social and economic forces as they existed

in Chaucers England, side by side with more traditional moral and religious discourse about society

that frequently cannot encompass them. (Phillips). Does the newe world of the Prologue clash with, or

ignore, the old values, according to you?

29. Taketh the moralitee, goode men. Discuss the problems this raises when reading The NunsPriests Tale.

30. In the guise of a story of three rioters, the Tale presents us with the facts of the Pardoners case

and the future that awaits him Elaborate and comment on this remark.

31. Is the Pardoner a ful vicious man or a tortured soul pretending that he is not tortured?

32. In the Nuns Priests Tale Chaucer shows us how to combine sentence and solaas. Though the

tale is comic it is not without a serious theme. Do you agree?

33. Chaucers exploration of the nature and purpose of fiction and its effect on its audience is one of the

themes of the Canterbury Tales. Discuss.