PART I

estates satire

John Wyclif

“Litera gesta docet…”

Lollardy

Marie D’Oignes

Nicholas Love

Statute of Laborers

Thomas Arundel

Troynovaunt

1381

A-, B-, C-texts

affective piety

atonement

concatenatio

Cur Deus homo?

De haeretico comburendo

devil’s rights

dream vision

PART II. You will be asked to identify four or five passages drawn from the semester’s reading in a short paragraph. You should provide the title of the work from which the passage is taken (and the author if known), give a short account of the context (the speaker, the setting, what is being described or referred to), and briefly discuss the passage’s importance—its thematic, symbolic, moral, or other kind of significance in the text from which it is drawn.

PART III. You will be asked to respond to two of the following questions with a thoughtful, well-organized essay that uses plenty of specific examples. Which questions will appear on the exam? Perhaps you will dream the correct answer this weekend, and an allegorical personification will tell you, after first rebuking you for not having studied enough.

1. Discuss the pursuit of perfection--and the perfectibility of humankind, the methods of achieving perfection, and typical successes or failures--in at least three of the texts we've read this term.

2. Langland's Will asks two questions of Holichurche in Passus I of Piers Plowman: what is the right use of worldly goods, and what must one do to save one's soul? (“Your money or your life?”, as medieval historian Jacques LeGoff once put it.) These questions, and the ways in which they overlap, are at the heart of many texts we’ve read this term. Discuss the strategies employed by at least three of the writers we've read this semester in their attempts to reconcile, harmonize, mediate between or otherwise fudge the conflicting demands of earthly, temporal action and the penitential imperative at the heart of late-medieval Christianity. [nb: One of the three must be from before the midterm.]

3. Both Margery Kempe and the author of Mandeville’s Travels are faced with a similar problem of credibility in the writing of their books: that is, they have to convince their readers to believe in the truth of some outlandish stories and far-fetched claims. What strategies does each of them adopt in order to gain the confidence of, solicit the good will of, or otherwise seduce or browbeat their readers, so that those readers will take their texts seriously?

4. From the perspective of the end of the course, look back at the question of alterity that came up at the very beginning. Were the people of the middle ages, as they revealed themselves through their writing, fundamentally different from us modern folk? Or were their concerns and anxieties and tastes basically similar to ours, if often expressed in unfamiliar genres and forms? Be sure to refer specifically in your essay to at least three of the texts we’ve read.