ENGLISH 4270 MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE SPRING 2011 FIRST
ESSAY ASSIGNMENT
Essays are due by Thursday, February 18; they should be typed,
double-spaced, and four to six pages long in a 12-point font. In considering these
topics, bear in mind that they are starting points, and that simply answering
in sequence the questions below will not produce a good or even a coherent
essay. Develop your own particular
thesis, and be sure to support your argument through frequent and specific
reference to the text. Please let at
least one human being—one who knows the difference between “its” and
“it’s”—proofread your essay before you hand it in.
1. Design your own topic, of suitable specificity and
sophistication, about something that interests you in Mandeville’s Travels or Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight. Provide me with a one-paragraph description of
your topic no later than Friday, February 12.
Feel free to consult with me in developing this topic; discussing it
with your classmates is highly recommended, too.
2. Write a five- or six-page imitation of Mandeville's Travels. Describe your trip
to a place you've never been before, some of the things to be seen there, and
some of the things that happened to you on your travels. Weave your text out of other texts, as the
author of the Travels did: borrow
from other writers' accounts of your destination and from their adventures, and
subtly insert yourself as a character/narrator.
Don't bother to footnote, but do include a list of the sources from
which you've borrowed. Do your best to
capture Sir John's style and tone, remembering that you're writing less than a
story but more than a set of directions.
or
Write an account of
3. Mandeville’s
Travels certainly seems to
promote a tolerant attitude towards faiths other than the narrator’s own
Catholicism. But it doesn’t seem to
extend that attitude towards the Jews.
Discuss the effect and the function of the text’s treatment of the Jews
that Sir John “meets” during his “travels.”
4. Again, Mandeville’s
Travels readily bestows credit on all sorts of non-Christian folk, from
pagan princes to the dog-headed Cynocephales. But the objects of Sir John’s admiration all
seem to be men: what role do women, dog-headed or not, play in Mandeville’s Travels?
5. The author of Mandeville’s Travels is faced with a problem of credibility in the writing of his book: that is, he has to convince his readers to believe in some outlandish stories and far-fetched claims. What strategies does he adopt in order to gain the confidence of, solicit the good will of, or otherwise seduce or browbeat his readers, so that those readers will take his text seriously?
6. 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.
7. 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.
Favor me with a copy of this thesis, expressed in a few sentences, by Friday
2/12.