Dr. Laurel Amtower
Arts and Letters 259
Office Phone: 594-1517
Office Hours: Tu-Th 12:30-1:30
email: lamtower@mail.sdsu.edu
webpage: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~amtower/dbchome.html
Engl. 724: Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer
Monday 4-6:40 pm; SH 243A
This course will introduce you to some of the foundational authors of
the Western tradition: Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer. These three
greats, who lived within a single lifetime of each other, permanently
altered the shape of the literary landscape, ushering in what we think
of today as the humanist movement. Their presence in the cultural
memory of their successors is everywhere, even if their contributions
in toto are somewhat selectively recalled. This course counts as
satisfaction for either the British or the Comp Lit emphases; please
see your advisor to arrange credit.
Texts:
Dante: Vita Nuova (trans. Mark Musa, Oxford UP)
Dante: Inferno (trans. Mandelbaum)
Boccaccio: Life of Dante (trans. J. G. Nichols, Hesperus)
Boccaccio: Decameron (trans. G. H. McWilliam, Penguin)
Boccaccio: Filostrato
Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (Hieatt ed)
Course Requirements:
I. Attendance and participation in all seminar meetings (15%)
II. Weekly response papers, approximately 1 page, single-spaced. These
papers are informal, but should address the readings due that day in
class, focusing on interpretive issues or questions that strike you as
being interesting. Some suggestions for responses appear in the
schedule below. (30%)
III. Presentations. Twice during the semester you will read your
response paper aloud to the class on the day of the correlated
readings. Your interpretation will then serve as a launching point for
class discussion. On these days your responses will receive a formal
grade, so treat these with care. (15%)
IV. Seminar paper, approximately 15 pages, typed, double-spaced, on a
topic of your choice, which discusses one or more of the literary texts
of the class in relation to some critical perspective or concept. (40%)
Schedule:
Week 1: Introduction and sign-ups for response papers
Week 2: Dante, Florence, and the Citizen-Poet.
Reading: Boccaccio, Life of Dante; Dante, Vita Nuova. Questions
for thought: What is poetry for Dante? What is the role of the author
in the making of poetry? How does personal experience become
authoritative?
Week 3: Dante’s Allegory. Reading: Dante,
“Letter to Can Grande della Scala” (ONLINE); selection on
Allegory from The Banquet (ONLINE); The Inferno cantos 1-11. Questions
for thought: How does Dante understand allegory? What is the role of
the “sign” in the medieval text? In the medieval world? How
does the reader learn to read the world via the “book of
nature”?
Week 4: The Poet and the Personal Quest.
Reading: The Inferno cantos 12-23.
Questions for thought: What is the nature of the personal quest in the
Inferno? How does empathy work in the text? How does Dante see his
readers as gaining personally by immersing themselves in the unfolding
of a universal history? How does he do this himself?
Week 5: The nature of reading and writing.
Reading: The Inferno cantos 24-34.
Questions for thought: What is the role of the author in the text? How
does Dante see his own relationship to past “authorities”
such as Virgil, Cicero, and the like? How does his personal experience
mediate what we learn from the “authorities”? How does
Dante’s relationship with Virgil evolve? How does his personal
experience grow out of his own interaction with authority?
Week 6: The New Humanism.
Reading: Boccaccio, selections from Genealogy of the Gentile Gods
(ONLINE); selections from Decameron: Author’s Preface,
Author’s Introduction; Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: General
Prologue. Questions for thought: How would you describe the late
fourteenth-century understanding of poetry and how it differs from
Dante’s? How do Chaucer and Boccaccio translate theology into
poetry? What, for them, is the value of poetry? How does his
understanding of the benefits of poetry differ from Dante’s?
Week 7: Boccaccio, Chaucer, and love that ends
unhappily. Reading: Chaucer, “The Knight’s Tale”;
Decameron 4.1 (i.e. fourth day, first story) and 4.9.
Week 8: Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Humor.
Reading: Chaucer, “The Miller’s Tale,” “The
Reeve’s Tale”; Decameron 3.10; 6.intro, 7.2, 4.2,
“Author’s Conclusion”
Week 9: Boccaccio, Chaucer, and happiness after
misfortune. Reading: Chaucer, “The Man of Law’s Tale”
(ONLINE) and Decameron 2.7; “The Clerk’s Tale”
(ONLINE) and Decameron 10.10.
Week 10: Boccaccio, Chaucer, and gentilesse.
Reading: Chaucer, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”;
Decameron 8.3 and 8.7; “Prioress’s Tale” and
Decameron 1.2 and 1.3
Week 11: “The Franklin’s Tale” and
selections from Boccaccio’s Filocolo (ONLINE); “Nun’s
Priest’s Tale”
Week 12: Boccaccio, Chaucer, and more fabliaux.
Reading: Chaucer, “The Merchant’s Tale,” “The
Shipman’s Tale,” “Pardoner’s Tale,”
Decameron 1.1 and 8.1.
Week 13: Troilus and Criseyde.
Reading: Boccacio’s Filostrato books I-III; Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Books I-II
Week 14: Filostrato IV-VII; Troilus and Criseyde III-V
Week 15: Conclusions, etc.