ENGLISH 4270 MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE SPRING 2011
GRADY THIRD ESSAY ASSIGNMENT
Essays
are due by Thursday, April 21; they
should be typed, double-spaced, and five to six pages long in a 12-point font.
They may be submitted electronically. In considering the topics below, 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.
1. Design your own topic, of
suitable specificity and sophistication, about something that interests you in Piers Plowman or
2.
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.]
3.
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.
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.]
4.
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. 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?
5. 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
5. [held over
from last time!] 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.