Dr. Huston/ENGL 2331/Lit. Analysis SPR-2025 2
Literary Analysis Essay 2: Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath”
Due date: Tuesday, April 8, by 11:30 pm, by 11:30 pm
Reminder—Late assignments are not accepted
Purpose: To provide students with an opportunity to explore and analyze Chaucer’s masterful creation and development of his character, the Wife of Bath.
Assignment: In the
Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer fashions a number of interesting characters. One of the most detailed and multilayered creations is the Wife of Bath. Select one of the following topics and write an essay that analyzes the ideas presented in the prompt regarding the appropriate work (either the “Wife of Bath’s Tale” or “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue”).
1—In “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue,” the Wife explains her perspectives on marriage. Write an essay in which you do the following:
* First, Read lines 818-28 of the “Wife of Bath’s Prologue” and note how she clearly conveys her main ideas regarding marriage. In your essay begin by identifying the Wife’s ideas and her major theme about marriage.
* Second, analyze the development of this theme throughout the prologue. Be sure to give specific examples of how the Wife weaves this theme into her narrative.
* Third, determine why the Wife of Bath might be so fixed in her views about women and marriage.
2—The “Wife of Bath’s Tale” presents several elements that contradict the knight’s code of chivalry. Write an essay that does the following:
* First, identify and explain one element of the chivalric code that is evident in the “Wife of Bath’s Tale.”
* Second, explain how this element of the chivalric code is broken in her “Tale.”
* Third, analyze how breaking this code and then resolving this violation are essential to conveying the Wife of Bath’s main idea about marriage that she presents in her Prologue.
Development tips: Be sure that the essay does not simply summarize the ideas, but that the analysis provides well thought out ideas and looks closely into the work. Notice things that a casual reader would not. Use specific examples from the text to support assertions and reasoning. A successful literary analysis will use passages and descriptions from the prologue or the tale to show, to strengthen, and to extend the development of ideas.
Research: The purpose of the assignment is to think through Chaucer’s use of strategies and ideas evident in medieval literature.
Do not use any research beyond course materials for this assignment. Use only the literary text from our course textbook (
The Norton Anthology of World Literature, 5th ed., vol. B), this assignment sheet, any relevant eCampus course PowerPoints or handouts, and
your ideas. Essays that reveal the use of research will not be graded and will have a zero/0 placed in the Grade Center.
Use of AI for this assignment:
You may use a generative AI tool (
ChatGPT,
Claude,
Bing,
Co-Pilot) in the following steps that indicate AI use is appropriate. Use a free online tool; there is no need to purchase AI access for this course or this assignment.
Please note that while AI can be a valuable tool for sparking ideas and facilitating deeper exploration of the text,
any use of generative AI is meant to supplement your own thinking
and analysis, not to replace it. AI can provide helpful insights, suggestions, and perspectives, but you must engage critically with the AI generated content and integrate it into your analysis only after you have considered its relevance, accuracy, and alignment with your own interpretations and understanding of the text.
Steps for this essay:
1—Preliminary Invention: After selecting the option you would like to follow, make a list of the qualities or elements of the particular focus you have chosen. For example, if you are focusing on the ways that the Wife of Bath refers to marriage, then make a list of instances in the “Prologue” that demonstrate this. You may use AI if you are having difficulty identifying these instances, so
AI will be fine to use as an invention tool with this step.
2—Drafting: From your list from step 1, select two or three that you feel comfortable discussing in the essay. If you need assistance in clarifying or refining your focus on these elements,
you may prompt an AI tool to help you with sharpening your ideas. Use these ideas to begin putting together your analysis.
3—Arrangement: Be sure to organize your analysis using the Writing the Literary Analysis handout. (
Do not use AI for this step.)
5—Incorporating Quotations: These are essential for support of your assertions in the analysis. If you are having difficulty selecting a quotation to support a specific point of your analysis, you may insert a passage from the piece of literature into your AI tool and ask for help in singling out and inserting an appropriate quotation. However,
be careful because AI may not represent the quotation accurately. Also, AI does not use quotation marks, so you MUST correct this error.
6—Editing: Edit and revise the final version of your essay. You may use AI for checking spelling and identifying basic grammar errors in your writing.
Do not have AI rewrite your sentences though. Your syntax (sentence construction) should reflect your own voice and your own patterns of thinking. Be sure that no more than 15% of your final version consists of AI-generated text. If you include AI text in your essay, you MUST highlight any text generated by an AI tool.
Documentation and Citations: Use MLA to create a Works Cited page in which you document the piece of literature you are using (Prologue or Tale), the textbook author headnote (if you use it), and any AI tool you use in preparing the essay.
Document the AI tool you have used in the Works Cited list, and include a citation next to the passages in which AI texts are used.
Include the following elements when documenting the AI tool in your Works Cited:
“Prompt used.”
AI Tool Used, version used, date of use, URL
Example:
“What are three elements of courtly love evident in Marie de France’s ‘Lauistic’?” OpenAI.
ChatGPT, 9 Jan. 2025, chat.openai.com.
To cite this source in your essay, write this: (“What are three elements”).
Knowledge Gained from This Assignment:
· Identification of key elements frequently evident in medieval literature
· Immersion into and interpretation of literature that explores the cultural and social practices of medieval period.
· Practice using a documentation style and providing attribution to the sources used in your writing.
· Development of responsible and ethical use of AI tools in a learning setting.
NOTE: Your assignment will automatically be uploaded into
Turnitin.com. This system will run an originality report on your essay to determine whether it consists of plagiarism or of passages generated by AI. Please be reminded to follow the guidelines in the assignment for appropriate use of AI to avoid any difficulties with this assignment. Reread the course policy on use of AI to ensure that you understand what constitutes appropriate use.
Turn in Assignment: Upload the essay document to the Literary Analysis Assignment portal as an MS Word document.
Do not upload any other document types like PDFs, Pages, or Google-docs.
Literary Analysis length: 3 to 4 pages in length, using Times New Roman 12-point font, and double spacing one time only between every line of the document..
Essay Structure:
Write the paper in an essay structure. For this assignment, do not use headings. However, do use transitional words, phrases, or sentences to help you link ideas smoothly so that they maintain clarity, unity, and coherence.
MLA Manuscript Formatting:
Students must use MLA formatting for all essays in this course. Click on the following URL link which will take you to the
MLA Style Center and to a detailed explanation of how to format the essay.
Here are a few key formatting points:
‐ Times New Roman 12 point font throughout the entire document (header and Works Cited included)
‐ one inch margins—top, bottom, left, right
‐ MLA heading (
appears on page 1 ONLY)
· a running header that appears in the top, right-hand corner of every page: Last Name and page number
‐ double space the entire document—remove the extra line spacing that MS Word throws in automatically
Document and Cite the two literary works and Headnotes from the
Norton:
The piece of literature being analyzed, the headnote in the
Norton
Anthology text, and the notes provided in the Aristotle and Sophocles eCampus folders should be the only sources used in the essay. The following URL links will provide you with some guidelines on how to create a Works Cited page that documents the play and the
Norton Anthology:
How to document the head note on Chaucer in the list of Works Cited:
Puchner, Martin, et al., eds. “Geoffrey Chaucer.”
The Norton Anthology of World Literature: Beginnings to 1650, 5th ed., Ebook, vol. B, W. W. Norton, 2024, pp. 1199-1204.
How to document the prologue in the list of Works Cited:
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue.”
The Norton Anthology of World Literature: Beginnings to 1650, edited by Martin Puchner et al., 5th ed., Ebook, vol. B, W. W. Norton, 2024, pp. 1224-42.
How to document the tale in the list of Works Cited:
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.”
The Norton Anthology of World Literature: Beginnings to 1650, edited by Martin Puchner et al., 5th ed., Ebook, vol. B, W. W. Norton, 2024, pp. 1243-50.
Parenthetical In-text Citations:
Also, when quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing information from the piece of literature, you must follow MLA style guidelines for presenting and citing the original work. Be sure to use parenthetical in-text citations when quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing in your essay.
1—placement: Place the parenthetical in-text citation at the end of the sentence in which a quotation appears or a paraphrase has been used.
2—formation: Citations for the literary works are different than citations for the headnote. Follow these guidelines:
—
headnote citation: Give the editor’s name, et al., and the page number: (Puchner et al. 1135).
—
prologue or tale citation: Give the author’s name, indicate which work you are referring to (“Tale” or “Prologue”), and
the inclusive line numbers for the quotation, like this: (Chaucer, “Tale” 925-30).
