ENGLISH 114: INTRODUCTION TO MEDIEVAL LITERATURE

Spring 2015 Final Exam Study Guide

Part I. Half of the terms below will appear on the final exam; you will be asked to identify 7-8 of them, and the way they pertain to this semester’s reading, in two or three sentences.

A-, B-, C-texts

affective piety

Cotton Nero A.x

cynocephales

devil’s rights

embôitement

Estates satire

Fair Unknown

Honi Soit Qui Mal Pence

John Wyclif

Lollardy

Nine Worthies

Odoric of Pordenone

PART II--PASSAGES. You will be asked to identify six or seven 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.

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville The Parliament of Fowls

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight The Franklin’s Tale

Pearl Le Morte D'Arthur

Piers Plowman (1-7, 18-20)

Part III--ESSAYS. You will probably be asked to respond to two of the three essay prompts listed below.

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.

4. The author of Mandeville’s Travels, Margery Kempe, and William Caxton, the printer/editor of Malory's Morte D'Arthur, are all faced with a problem of credibility in their texts: that is, they have to (or at least seek to) convince their readers to believe in some pretty amazing stories. What strategies do they 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?

5 “….If chivalric rectitude lies on the side of the knight who kills a knight because that knight has killed a knight, then what activity distinguishes good knights from bad? How can the chivalric good be defined if killing knights marks knightly rectitude as well as the evil it opposes?” (Christopher Cannon, “Malory’s Crime,” 160-61) Write an essay about telling good knights from bad in Malory's Morte D'Arthur.