English 410: REVISED: 3/26/08

Chaucer and Whitman: Original Epicenters of British and American Culture

This is a capstone course designed primarily for advanced majors. It will take a broad view of the influence of two great figures at the beginning of their nation’s literary and cultural development.

We will study first the heart of Chaucer’s achievement in The Canterbury Tales, the first great work to pull the British people together and to stand on an equal footing with the likes of Homer, Ovid, and Dante. Chaucer’s great experiment in multi-genre narrative, cultural realism, and heroic couplets is presented in the full allegorical dress of a pilgrimage. At the same time, it represents a medieval beginning of the dramatic tradition in a surprisingly democratic setting.

Likewise, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass turned all of European tradition and poetry on its head to become the first authentic, literary manifestation of America, its Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. His unique democratic and ecological vista makes him the first poet to erase the author’s privilege and make the reader primary. His invention of free verse for a free-spirited America has had far flung influence on all of American culture: music, photography, narrative, architecture, film, and especially poetry. In spite of its great optimism, Whitman’s life-poem translates readily into political harangue and even howl, not just for the beat generation, but for much of the great national literatures of Latin America as well.

The influence of Chaucer is more difficult to trace in the expressive arts, largely because of Shakespeare’s brighter star, but we can trace Chaucer’s democratic spirit in the poetic and critical writings of many later figures who had to come to grips with Chaucer in order to follow out their own paths of narrative, poetry, comedy, and satire. It is largely Chaucer’s experimentation in genre that has spread throughout British and to a lesser extent Scottish literary culture.

Classes will be conducted (in modest fashion) like a graduate seminar: reading of the primary materials will be done in the context of an individual student’s wider reading of the author’s works and the basic postmodern critical perspectives. Each student will choose a path of influence in a later writer or artist to report on in class. The final project will include a paper on one of the two authors and a parallel creative project. The two elements should work together and enhance one another. The creative projects will be performed in a pilgrimage (i.e. party) setting at the end of the term and may involve cooperative efforts. The final exam will cover both authors and will explore your original ideas about how they set the stage for their nation’s literary and cultural traditions.

This course would be ideal for any majors who might be preparing to take the GRE or otherwise interested in graduate school. On the other hand, it should also work well for those interested in creative writing, the expressive arts, and performance. For more information and examples of previous Chaucer and Whitman courses, consult my web site ( web.Rollins.edu/sphelan/courses/). Email queries to sphelan@rollins.edu.

Week	Date	Reading Assignments and Classroom Activities
1)	Jan. 16	Introduction of the course and the class; Questionnaire on readings
	Wed.	Quick primer and strategies for reading Chaucer in Middle English
2)	Jan. 23	Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales: Fragment I, The General Prologue and the Knight’s Tale
		Critics: David Benson and George Lyman Kittredge
3)	Jan. 30	Chaucer’s Fabliaux: tales by the Miller, Reeve, Cook, Friar, Summoner, and Shipman
		Critics: Larry D. Benson and Paul Strohm
4)	Feb. 6	The Marriage Group: tales by the Wife of Bath and the Clerk
		Critic: Kittredge
5)	Feb. 13	Marriage Group cont.: tales by the Merchant and the Franklin, with the supplement of the Second Nun’s Tale
		Critics: any of the feminists, Elaine Tuttle Hanson, Jill Mann, Carolyn Dinshaw, etc.
6)	Feb. 20	Tales of the Pardoner, the Prioresse, and the Nun’s Priest plus a survey of the rest, esp. Chaucer’s own tales and his Retraction
		Strategies for reading Whitman’s Leaves of Grass
7)	Feb. 27	“Song of Myself”: The Self and the Structure of the Poem
		Critics: WW himself in Preface to 1855 edition
8)	Mar. 5	“Song of Myself” and the Sea: “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” and “As I Ebbed with the Ocean of Life”
		Critics: choose one of the writers between 1855-1955
9)	Mar. 12	SPRING BREAK!
10)	Mar. 19	Class canceled for the sake of the Florida Studies Symposium
11)	*Mar.26	“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” and “Sleepers”
		Whitman, Democracy, and the Civil War (“Specimen Days”)
		Critics: choose one of the recent critics
12)	*April 2	“Democratic Vistas”
		Earth Poets in the Whitman Tradition (choose one from the list)
	*April 4	PAPER DUE: (outside my office by 5:00 pm) Part I (essay or creative)
13)	*Apr. 9	Reports and overviews
	Apr. 11	LATE PAPERS DUE: (penalty = one grade level, e.g. B+ à B)
14)	Apr. 16	Preparations for the Performances:
		Individual and Team Arrangements
	Apr. 18	Entire Project Due: revised first part and the other part
15)	Apr. 23	The Pilgrim’s Party (day and hours to be announced)
16)	Dec. 5	Final Exam

GRADE FORMULA:

Attendance and Participation, both in class and on the Blackboard = 20%

Major Paper = 25%

Correlative Creative Project and Performance = 25%

Critical Report(s) = 10%

Final examination on the two authors and their influences in British and American Literature = 20%

Credit in the course requires satisfactory completion of all four parts of the grade formula.

ATTENDANCE:

Less than 90% attendance is grounds for failure. Please negotiate with me about any absences, preferably before they happen. More that two absences will require some special negotiations for additional work.

CONFERENCES AND INFORMATION:

Please visit me at my spacious office in Carnegie 103. For my office hours and class schedule, consult my web site (http://web.rollins.edu/~sphelan). Make appointments after class or by phone (x2409) or through email (phelan@rollins.edu). On my web site, in addition to this syllabus, you may find a wealth of information about the basic concepts of my courses, my own critical perspectives, and my criteria for grading papers. Just click on COURSES, then CONCEPTS (at the bottom of the table).