Chaucer Mid-Term Study Guide.

1.         Who was Edward the Third?  What line/family of Kings did he belong to?  (And did Henry IV belong to the same line?)

2.         Who were Edward the Third’s two most important sons (a third — who? — was important to Chaucer)?

3.         Who was Edward the Third’s most violent son’s most important son?

4.         Chaucer held what jobs under Edward III?

5.         Be able to detail the historical/political intrigue surrounding Richard II.

6.         What are the "three estates”?

7.         Chaucer died when?

8.         From 1374 until 1386 where did Chaucer live?

9.         What is the Uprising of 1381?

10.       What is the Scropes-Grosvenor trial?

11.       In 1374 Chaucer received an appointment from the king. Name his new title and describe his job.

12.       When did Chaucer start The Canterbury Tales?

13.       If you see a Middle English “y,” it’s going to be pronounced like what verb? (Give an example of a modern day word.)

14.       If you see a Middle English “u” how will it be pronounced? (Same thing.)

15.       Etc. with the rest of the Middle English vowels.

16.       Name three characteristics of courtly love.

17.       Know the difference between charity and cupidity.

18.       What’s a frame narrative and where did Chaucer borrow it from?  How does Chaucer's not fit the typical structure of a frame narrative?

19.       What’s a frame narrative achieve for The Canterbury Tales?

20.       Where did Chaucer's sources for his fabliaux come from?

21.       What is the social hierarchy in Medieval England?  Can you give two versions of it?

22.       Without capitalism there can be no real middle class. What, then, passed for a “middle” class in Chaucer’s day?

23.       What was the religious hierarchy in Medieval Europe?

24.       What are defining characteristics of fabliaux?

25.       Property: who owned what?

26.        How might the religious hierarchy of Chaucer's age be related to the secular one?

27.       Be ready to translate individual words and a set of lines from the works.

28.       What’s the big deal with the “wed” in the last line of “Lak of Stedfastnesse”?

29.       Be prepared to discuss the various possible dates of that poem.

30.       What is the stanzaic form of “The Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse”?

31.       What is the genre of that poem?

32.       In the Envoy there, what does Chaucer raise that is significant regarding a political reading of this poem (and period)?

33.       What’s the central conceit (or pair of them?) which Chaucer employs in this “Complaint”?

34.       I got nothing to say about “The Former Age.”

35.       What’s a/the (?) point of “The Parliament of Fowls”?

36.       On which day does it occur?

37.       What’s the narrator of PF been reading before he dreams of gardens, gods and birds?

38.       Know the narrative course of “The Parliament.”

39.       What are the order of birds in that poem? Why are we given it in such great detail?

40.       When the first tercel speaks, what qualities of the formel does he dote upon?

41.       Be prepared to summarize the arguments of the other orders of birds.

42.       What’s the difference, or differences, between Chaucer and “Chaucer”?

43.       Name the host, the inn, and the area of London where the inn is located.

44.       Be able to name (by occupation is fine) a handful of the pilgrims

45.       How’s a Summoner different from a Pardoner?

46.       How’s a Monk different from a Friar?

47.       How’s the Cook different from everyone else?

48.       Why are the Pilgrims going to Canterbury, in particular?

49.       In what month does the pilgrimage occur?

50.       Aventure, sort or cas?

51.       Sentence and solaas?

52.       Chivalrie?

53.       Are The Canterbury Tales humorous or serious?

54.       Get under your belt the physical descriptions of at least three of the pilgrims.

55.       Where’s the Knight just coming back from?

56.       How many times has the Wife of Bath been wed?

57.       What are the respective “lests” of the Prioress, the Monk, the Pardoner, and the Reeve?

58.       Who was a sclendre colerik man?

59.       Who was a stout carl for the nones?

60.       Who was looked holwe and thereto soberly?

61.       What’s the host’s plan for the pilgrimage?

62.       Know the plot of the Knight’s Tale

63.       What’s a “cosmology”? What two are exemplified in the Knight’s Tale itself?

64.       Is Theseus really a god at the end of the tale or not?

65.       Describe the three sorts of love which Palamon and Arcite embody (one when they’re just cousins; two when they’re rivals).

66.       What is loveris maladye?

67.       Be ready to discuss the role of Fortune, including the Wheel of Fortune, in the KnT.

68.       What’s an “avatar” and how’s it relate to the KnT, particularly?

69.       What sort of orders do we see set up in the KnT?

70.       How do the catalogues in the KnT work, exactly?

71.       Chart the up/down motions -- literal and metaphorical -- of the main characters in the KnT.

72.        Name Chaucer's English literary contemporaries, as well as some of his Continental (particularly Italian) ones. 

73.    Where did fabliaux first develop?

74.    What are the Canterbury Tales most closely associated with fabliaux?

75.    Be able to delineate ways in which Chaucer changed (and probably improved upon) the fabliaux form.

76.    Who were fabliaux for, the lower classes or the upper?   

77.    Be ready to talk about the various important Parliaments which occurred during Chaucer's lifetime, and say why they were important. 

78.    What percentage of the population was represented by De Bracton's two Upper Estates?

79.    De Bracton's version is generally thought of as the dominant vision of the Three Estates.  What was Thomas Briton's competing version?

80.      Look at the quote from Jill Mann on Ryan's last PowerPoint slide.  What's that mean?  (It should have an "in" just before the quote, if that helps.)

81.     I think 80 is enough, don't you?