Reminder:  No postings are due on Monday November 27.  Enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday.

Assignment #9 for Monday November 13

For this week and all subsequent weeks, you may post either another question on text we are reading... or you may comment on another student's post for full credit, if students have posted early enough for commentary to be an option before the dealine.  Be careful to proofread and to save your work in another program before posting.

Assignment #8 for Monday November 6

For this week, you may post either another question on Keats's poems, letters, or commentary... or you may comment on another student's post for full credit.

Reminder:  No postings are due on Monday October 23--use your time this week to prepare for the mid-term.

Assignment #5...and onwards:  Write your own questions on the reading and post them by noon each Monday!

Now it is your turn to write questions for you and your classmates to consider as you read.  Post between one and four discussion questions on the reading.  We will choose from the entire group of questions for our day of discussion on each text, but you can also reply directly to your classmates' queries right away by posting comments.

Assignment #4:  Write your own questions for 10/2/06--Post by noon!

Now it is your turn to write questions for you and your classmates to consider as you read.  Post between one and four discussion questions on the reading.  We will choose from the entire group of questions for our day of discussion on each text, but you can also reply directly to your classmates' queries right away by posting comments.

Assignment #3:  Questions for 9/25/06--Post by noon!

A.  Re-read the Manciple’s Prologue after reading the Manciple’s tale. How does the Manciple come across as a character—does his tale reflect his behaviour here? How do his tale and his behavior relate to his mother’s advice at the tale’s end?

B.  Comment on the conversation between the Host and the narrator after the interruption to tale of Sir Topas: how does it affect your reading of the rest of the tales?

C.  Barthes asserts that we should not read texts as “the voice of a single person, the author” but rather as “a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash” a space defined only in the mind of a reader. What kind of textual reading is invited by the narration of the Canterbury Tales?

D.  Write your own discussion question about any of the material we have read so far! We will discuss our questions in our day of discussion next Thursday.

Note:  You will find the extract by Barthes in our Media Room (click link to the left).  Click Help link at the left and read directions for posting, then click Writing Room at the left to edit your profile and post your responses when ready.  After noon on 9/25, you can read your classmates' responses by clicking on their student profiles!

Assignment #2:  Questions for 9/18/06--Post by noon!

A.  How is the Wife of Bath’s Prologue different from the prologues to the Miller’s and Knight’s tales?

B.  How does the Wife of Bath’s tale represent the relationship between women and power?  Compare this representation to the image of female intercession in the Knight’s tale.

C.  Judith Butler asks the question “is drag the imitation of gender, or does it constitute the signifying gestures through which gender itself is established?”  With this question in mind, do you think we should consider the speaker of the Wife of Bath’s tale to be female (the voice of the character) or male (the voice of the writer) or neither?  Why?

Note:  You will find the extract by Butler in our Media Room (click link to the left).  Click Help link at the left and read directions for posting, then click Writing Room at the left to edit your profile and post your responses when ready.  After noon on 9/18, you can read your classmates' responses by clicking on their student profiles!

Assignment #1:  Questions for 9/10/06

Question A:  Based on reading the General Prologue (without any other knowledge of the Tales), is the Parson’s Tale and the Retraction what you would have expected as a conclusion?  Why or why not?

Question B:  Du Boulay identifies himself as a medieval historian and speaks of the historian as “fiction’s enemy” (492).  Donaldson opens his essay by claiming the need for Chaucer to be “rescued from the comparatively dull record of history” (503).  Are the arguments of these two essays, the historical and the literary, really irreconcilable?  Are there any ways in which the two intersect productively?    

Note:  We do not yet have student profiles allowing you to post, due to a delay in Wiser -- for this week, write down your responses to the three questions found on our Assignments page and bring your response to class with you on Tues September 12.  I hope by next week you will be able to post responses to Canterbury Tales questions, and then post questions for our last three texts.