English 114: Introduction to Medieval Literature                                     Spring 2015                                     Second Essay Assignment

 

Essays are due by Saturday, May 16; 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 “relatable”—proofread your essay before you hand it in.

 

1. Design your own topic, of suitable specificity and sophistication, about something that interests you in Pearl, St. Erkenwald, or Piers Plowman. Provide me with a one-paragraph description of your topic no later than Tuesday, May 12.  Feel free to consult with me in developing this topic; discussing it with your classmates is highly recommended, too.

 

2.  Do you think that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl were written by the same person?

 

3. Do you think that St. Erkenwald was written by the same person who wrote Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl?

 

 

4. When we read medieval English literature, we are exploring and trying to understand artifacts from our past. In St. Erkenwald, characters from the medieval period confront their own past, in the form of the miraculously preserved and surprisingly loquacious pagan judge.  Write an essay about that story of memory/ remembrance/memorialization: the problems it evokes, the issues it raises, the strategies it requires, the rewards it produces.

 

5. Write an estates satire in the manner of the Prologue to Piers Plowman.  Your poem must be at least 30 lines long and must be in the aa/ax alliterative style of Langland and Sir Gawain.  (The better the meter and alliteration, the better the grade!) You may --and probably should--satirize modern rather than medieval social estates; be sure to reread Langland's prologue carefully and to attend to his style—both the style of his verse, and his attitude towards his subject.

            On a separate page, write a paragraph or two about your poem, describing what’s Langlandian about its style, meter, and subject.

[Note: if you wrote a Mandeville imitation for a previous assignment, you are not eligible to select this topic.]

 

6. Write a confession scene modeled on Passus 5 of Piers Plowman.  Your poem must be at least 30 lines long and must be in the aa/ax alliterative style of Langland and Sir Gawain.  (The better the meter and alliteration, the better the grade!)  You must choose one (and only one!) of Langland’s Seven Deadly Sins, but your personification should probably indulge in modern rather than medieval behaviors.  Be sure to reread the confession scenes in Passus 5 carefully, attending to Langland’s style and attitude.  Try to keep it clean.

                        On a separate page, write a paragraph or two about your poem, describing what’s Langlandian about its style, meter, and subject.

[Note: if you wrote a Mandeville imitation for a previous assignment, you are not eligible to select this topic.]

 

                        N.B. I’d like a count by Tuesday of how many are interested in options 5 and 6; if there are enough of

                        you, I’ll schedule a brief workshop on generating workable alliterative lines for some time next week.

 

 

7. Discuss how the authors of Pearl and Piers Plowman characterize, define, represent, employ, satirize, undermine, invest in, manipulate, authorize, or otherwise make meaningful their poems' narrators.  (In other words, compare and contrast them.) What do we learn from and about them?  What do they learn?  How do they interact with other characters?  What, if anything, do they have in common?

 

8.    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

 

9. Piers Plowman appears in five manuscripts with Mandeville’s Travels, more often than with any other contemporary 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?

 

10. "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.