English
114: Introduction to Medieval Literature Spring
2015 Third Essay Assignment
Essays are due by Thursday, June 4;
they should be typed, double-spaced, and four to six pages long (±1400 words) in a 12-point font. Please submit them electronically to
fgrady@umsl.edu.
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—someone
who will not let you use the word “mindset”—proofread your essay before you
hand it in.
1. Design your own topic, of
suitable specificity and sophistication, about something that interests you in
Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, The Book of Margery Kempe,
The Parlement of Fowls or the Franklin’s Tale. Provide me with a one-paragraph description of
your topic no later than Friday, March 18.
Feel free to consult with me in developing this topic; discussing it
with your classmates is highly recommended, too.
2. Margery Kempe's
Lynn was an international center of trade in the later middle ages. Her father
and her husband were successful merchants, and she started a couple of
businesses herself. Discuss the presence and effect of money, commerce and the
language of bargaining in her Book's
vocabulary, style, and/or structure. In other words, how does her mercantile
background influence the way she discusses spiritual matters?
3. 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.
4. The Pearl-maiden, Holy Church, Dame Study, Scripture—fictional females
conveying theological and spiritual truth apparently don’t present the same
problems that Margery Kempe does. Why not?
5.
Does Langland’s Will have anything in common
with Malory’s Lancelot?
6. We know what heroic avenues are
available for manly knights, but what roles are open for women in a world like
that of Malory’s Morte?
What does the world of romance offer to women, and on what does their status,
interest, role, or function depend? How
much control does love—whether “courtly” or not—give Malory’s women over their
affairs?
7. Discuss Malory’s use of disguise
and mistaken identity in the Morte.
8. “…violence provides the
foundation for an elaborate structure of exchange which determines hierarchies
among men…[it is] an institutionalized means of
acquiring economic wealth [designed to] stabilize the social order” (Laurie
Finke & Martin Schichtman). Write about the role and function of violence
in Malory’s Morte.
9. Compare the Gawains
we've seen this semester in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Le Morte D'Arthur. How do
different writers use Gawain to represent different attitudes towards chivalry
and heroic knightly behavior? What, if anything, do the characters have
in common?
10. Though Malory’s title is the Morte D’Arthur, and
Caxton devotes his preface to the text to discussing the evidence for Arthur’s
historical existence, in the later books of the Morte it’s clear that Lancelot’s
role is what interests Malory most.
Discuss, hypothesize about, review, critique, extol, explain, and
otherwise ruminate about Lancelot’s importance in Malory’s text.
11. Though Malory’s title is the Morte D’Arthur, and
Caxton devotes his preface to the text to discussing the evidence for Arthur’s
historical existence, in the later books of the Morte it’s clear that Lancelot’s
role is what interests Malory most. What
happens to Arthur? Discuss Arthur’s role
in the later books of the Morte.
12. The Grail Quest includes all of
the usual elements of a chivalric adventure: knights in armor undertake
battles, quest far and wide, participate in tournaments, etc. But it clearly differs from other episodes in
Malory’s Morte.
How does Malory modify our understanding of the knight’s role in the
world, and the meaning of chivalric adventure? Does Malory mean his Grail Quest
to sanctify the idea of knighthood, or diminish it by comparing it to more
spiritual modes of being? How does the
Grail Quest change the way we read the last books of the Morte—if it does?
13. The Parliament of Fowls has a pretty extensive soundtrack: the harmony
of the spheres, the music in the garden, the sighs in the temple, the noises of
the birds, etc. Write an essay about the
theme of sound/noise/music in the Parliament.
14. One critical preoccupation
concerning the Parliament of Fowls
has traditionally been its thematic integrity, and whether it can be said to
have any. What holds the Parliament of
Fowls together thematically? Do its parts connect logically, or according
to some other principle of organization—or not at all? Is there some aspect of structure or form or
tone that unifies the poem, in the absence of any consistent thematic
development—or is there actually a theme consistently developed? (Translation: What is the Parliament of Fowls really about?)
15.
Starting with the role of the tercelet in the Parliament of Fowls, write an essay in
which you discuss the way in which feminine desire gets represented--if it
does--in Chaucer's work. What do women
(and birds) want--if they want
anything? And what effect does
acknowledging (or not acknowledging) their desires have on things [narratives,
best-laid plans, the status quo, masculine intentions]? Redefine the terms of this question in any
way you need to in order to produce an essay about the status of the female
characters in the two Chaucer poems we’ve read.
16.
Use these critical
remarks about the Franklin’s Tale by Susan Crane as the starting point for
an essay about Dorigen’s choices, and Chaucer’s, in
that tale.