Sample Research Topics for Chaucer


Courtly Love and the Knight's Tale

Boethius and the Knight's Tale

The Knight's Tale and Astrology

The Knight and the Fourteenth-Century Christian Warrior

The Miller's Tale (or the Reeve's or Merchant's) and the Fabliau Tradition

Antifeminism and the Nun's Priest's Tale

The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Medieval Attitudes about Women

Fidelity in Marriage in the Wife of Bath's Tale (or the Franklin's Tale)

The Role of the Wife in the Wife of Bath's Tale (or the Franklin's Tale or the Clerk's Tale)

The Physician and the Bible

The Physician and Medieval Medicine

Alchemy and the Canon's Yeoman's Tale

The Prioress's Tale and Medieval Attitudes about Jews

The Medieval Church (or aspects thereof)

Medieval Clergy (Regular and Secular) and Chaucer's Religious Pilgrims

The Second Nun's Tale and Saints' Lives

Chaucer and Medieval Manuscripts

Medieval Pilgrimages

Thomas à Becket and the Shrine at Canterbury

Female Beauty in the Fourteenth Century

Female (or Male) Fashion in the Fourteenth Century

The Clerk (and/or the Miller's and Reeve's Tales Clerks) and the Medieval University

The Medieval University Curriculum

The Nun's Priest's Tale and Medieval Beast Fables

The Nun's Priest's Tale and Medieval Ideas About Dreams

The Bible and the Parson's Tale: The Seven Deadly Sins

Fourteenth-Century Food and Cookery

Medieval Rhetoric and the Canterbury Tales

Fragments and the Arrangements of the Canterbury Tales