Englisches Seminar - Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Father of English poetry persists, his poetry takes on a curious life of its own: the
work of other writers is sometimes attributed to Chaucer and integrated into
Chaucer’s own poems; later poets write in response to or as a continuation of
Chaucer’s work. So too do writers of literary and medieval history deploy an idea of
Chaucer to create an idea of the medieval, which in some way is positioned against
ideas of the ‘Renaissance’ or the ‘modern’. This course will trace some of the ghosts
of Chaucer and his work in the years following his death through into the
seventeenth century in both poetic an political contexts.
Course aims:
This course aims to explore, not so much the work of Chaucer itself, but the
responses of readers, writers, editors, and literary critics to it. We will therefore
consider a wide range of texts, including John Lydgate’s The Siege of Thebes
(a1402), Robert Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid (a1470), the plays of William
Shakespeare, and an ‘Answer to the Sompner’s Prologue of Chaucer’ by John Gay
(1685-1732). We will also look at the role of printed editions in shaping Chaucer’s
work (for example, those of William Caxton, Richard Pynson and William Thynne).
More broadly speaking, in response to the growing scholarly interest in
‘medievalism’, the course also aims to explore the ways in which ideas about
Chaucer are bound up with ideas about the medieval.
Assessment:
The course will be assessed by an essay.