ENGLISH 4270 MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE SPRING 2011 SECOND ESSAY ASSIGNMENT

Essays are due by Thursday, March 24; 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 Malory’s Morte D’Arthur or Pearl. 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. 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?

3. Discuss Malory’s use of disguise and mistaken identity in the Morte.

4. “…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.

5. 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?

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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?

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

10. The author of Pearl, like the writer of Mandeville's Travels, uses strategies of defamiliarization in pursuing his literary and rhetorical ends: that is, the author has his dreamer confront a familiar figure who turns out to be not at all what he expects. Write an essay about how this strategy works in the poem.