ENGLISH 2310 FIRST ESSAY ASSIGNMENT

GRADY FALL 2017

Essays should be typed, double-spaced with one-inch margins, and four to five pages/1500-2000 words long on one of the topics below. Be sure to refer as helpfully and specifically as possible to the texts upon which you're basing your argument--and be sure to have an argument or thesis. Your essay should have an original title, and it should not use the words ”mindset” or “portray.” Essays are due to my inbox (fgrady@umsl.edu) on Monday, September 25. Check with me if you do not receive confirmation of receipt within a day.

1. Design your own topic, of suitable specificity and sophistication, about something that interests you in Lanval, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or the Old English poetry we've read. Consultation with the instructor is required for those of you intending to use this option; talking with one another is highly recommended, too. I must have a paragraph describing your topic by Tuesday, September 19 (email would be best--fgrady@umsl.edu).

2. Discuss the importance of the hall (as a meaningful setting, or as a sign of social stability, or as the thing that marks the difference between the natural world and the human, or as a way of distinguishing inside from outside) with reference to at least two of the Anglo-Saxon texts you've read.

3. Discuss the way (in terms of setting, or the representation of character and motivation, or something else) that the Anglo-Saxon literature we’ve read deals with themes of isolation. (You might look at the mysterious poem that follows The Wanderer in your anthology,“The Wife's Lament“ [NA 110-11]).

4. Discuss the theme of consolation (consolation for what? for whom?) in The Wanderer and The Dream of the Rood (and maybe even The Battle of Maldon).

5. The Dream of the Rood is an explicitly religious poem which nevertheless clearly borrows the language of Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry—the language of Beowulf and Maldon--to characterize the crucifixion and the Christian person’s relationship to the capital-L Lord. What effect does the poem achieve with this borrowing? (Is it using heroic language to make an unfamiliar subject appealing to a particular audience? Is it trying to take advantage of heroic poetry’s abiding emphasis on loyalty? Is it trying to give a new context to the theme of isolation and exile familiar from the heroic and elegiac poems? Is it doing something else entirely?)

6. "So, here is the House of Arthur," says the Green Knight mockingly, "Where’s the fortitude and fearlessness you’re so famous for?” The 1960 musical Camelot claims that "in short, there's simply not / A more congenial spot / For happily-ever-aftering" than King Arthur's court, but the Arthurian tales we've read are not quite so full of praise. Discuss the way the Arthurian court is treated in Lanval and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

7. Discuss (compare, contrast, make an argument about, develop a thesis concerning) the role that magic plays in Lanval and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

8. “When you want to talk to me / there is no place that you can think of… /that I shall not be there with you / to satisfy all your desires,” says the fairy maiden to Lanval, suggesting that in their relationship, he’s the boss—his desires come first. But of course, at the end of the tale, it’s the maiden who rides to the rescue, reversing the usual conventions of romance. Discuss the way that Marie’s lai experiments with some of our expectations about male and female roles.

9. In the world of romance, generosity is an important virtue, an essential trait for good lords and hosts to exhibit. Write an essay about this aristocratic largesse in Lanval and Sir Gawain. How does it reveal character, or at least let us make assumptions about it? How does it motivate action and plot, and how does it produces consequences, both intended and unintended?

10. Discuss the role(s) that the pentangle and the girdle play in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in the context of a thesis that you develop and defend about what/how/why they mean what they do.

11. We learn at line 2456 of the 2530-line Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that Morgan le Fay, King Arthur's half-sister and Gawain's aunt, has been responsible for putting the events of the poem in motion. This is typical behavior for Morgan in the Arthurian legends, but in this poem her appearance--or rather, her mention—raises another question. Does a revelation so late in the poem demonstrate how the courtly world tries to marginalize women and downplay their power, as some critics argue, or does it indicate that women are so powerful and disruptive to the chivalric order of things that they can't be excluded or hidden despite the best efforts of manly knights? With this question in mind, write about the role of women in Sir Gawain.