ENGLISH 4270
MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE FALL
2006
GRADY FOURTH
ESSAY
ASSIGNMENT
Essays
are due by Friday, December 8; 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 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.
Also, please note on your essay whether you
would like to have it returned at the final exam with a grade but no comments,
or whether you would like to pick it up at a later time (i.e., early next
semester) with a full set of reader’s comments.
1. Design your own topic, of suitable specificity and
sophistication, about something that interests you in Piers Plowman, St. Erkenwald, or the Book
of Margery Kempe. Provide me with a one-paragraph
description of your topic no later than Monday, December 4. Feel free to consult with me in developing
this topic; discussing it with your classmates is highly recommended, too.
2. [held over from last time!]
Write an essay
about one of the following topics in Piers
Plowman, referring to its importance in at least two different places in the
poem.
(a) poverty (d)
the Seven Deadly Sins
(b) Clergy (i.e., learning) (e) money
(c) clergy (i.e., clerics) (f)
labor
3. Piers Plowman appears in five manuscripts with Mandeville’s Travels, more often than with any other work. What would lead the compiler of a manuscript
to put these two works together in the same MS?
How would you describe the interests of a patron who might order such a
manuscript made? What, in other words, do these texts have in common? What kind of pair do they make?
4. Compare the attitude(s) demonstrated towards
clerical and institutional authority in both the Book of Margery Kempe and Piers Plowman. How does each author
represent figures of authority? Be sure to attend both to what gets said, and to who says it.
5. Margery Kempe's
6. "Is Langland mainly
concerned with the redemption of society or with that of the individual?"
This question has produced many divergent answers in the criticism of Piers Plowman, and now you get to take
your place in the ongoing conversation. In articulating your position, you might
find helpful James Simpson's recent observation that "Langland's
conception of what it is to be a person is different from our own. One of these
differences concerns the intimacy of relationship between the self and
institutions in Langland's poem"--for example,
the close identification of Conscience with the Church in the last two passus.
7. Write an essay about the various attitudes towards pilgrimage
that are displayed in at least two of the following: Piers Plowman, The Book of
Margery Kempe, Mandeville’s Travels.
8. The Pearl-maiden,
9. Does Langland’s Will have anything in
common with Malory’s Lancelot?