"Age of Chaucer" - First Essay

EN210: Special Topics:

The Age of Chaucer

First Essay Assignment

The first essay is due at the beginning of class on Thursday, March 17. The essay should be about 6-7 pages long. You may write about any element of any of the texts we have studied. If you choose a topic other than those suggested, however, I suggest that you discuss it with me before beginning. Here are some suggested topics:

Signs and symbols (the Pentangle; the Green Girdle; Elaine’s sleeve; etc.) play important parts in the chivalric romances we have read. Analyze the nature and function of such symbols in one or both of these texts, and consider what they suggest about representation and interpretation, or about how we should interpret these stories.
Write about the representation of gender in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or Le Morte Darthur. (You could conceivably write about both romances, but you would have to focus your argument very narrowly.) Consider the roles allowed to women in chivalric romance, how chivalry encodes gender roles, and how romances figure gender in the resistance to chivalric ideals. Feel free to focus on individual episodes or characters, such as Guenivere, Morgan, or Elaine.
Consider chivalry itself as theme in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and/or Le Morte Darthur. What is chivalry taken to stand for? How are the ideals of chivalry challenged, and how do they fare? Is chivalry itself undermined, or do individuals fail to live up to the ideals of chivalry?
Analyze the mystery plays to show how the drama creates communities through text and performance. You may want to address the dramatization of tensions within the community, such as class, region, or gender. You could, for instance, focus on the feelings generated in the audience by the Brome “Abraham and Isaac,” or on the role of Mak in the “Second Shepherds’ Pageant,” or on violence in the York “Crucifixion.” Or you could compare and contrast the representations of gender and marriage in the Noah plays of Chester and Wakefield.
Compare the role of affective piety in mystical writing and in religious drama. Consider, for instance, the depiction of Christ’s suffering and the individual’s relationship to it in The Book of Margery Kempe and in the York “Crucifixion”; or, consider the relationship between everyday, human life and the divine and eternal in Julian’s Showings and in the “Second Shepherds’ Pageant.”
Compare and contrast Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich as women writers. Consider, or instance, whether they employ styles or address topics that are particularly feminine in nature; whether they employ different strategies to define or defend the interests of women; and perhaps you find one or the other more effective in such a feminist project.
Compare and contrast the visions of society and social order in Boccaccio, Gower, and/or Langland. (You could compare and contrast two of these effectively, but I don’t think you have space to address all three with sufficient depth.) What, according to these authors, is society ideally? What is it really? What do instances of extreme stress reveal about social order? Do they envision alternative organizations of society that might be preferable to the conventional order?
Analyze the tales told by Boccaccio, Gower, or Langland and explain what they see as the roles of storytelling, literature, or art, and how they relate to society.

Whichever topic you choose, it is extremely important that you have a clear, central thesis. This thesis should be stately clearly and concisely at the beginning of the essay, and that everything in the essay be dedicated to demonstrating this thesis using specific evidence from the text or texts. Note that the thesis of the essay is the one, central idea that you want to convince the reader of. A good thesis is one that can be proven (that is, there is objective evidence in the texts to support it) and that needs to be proven (that is, it is not obvious or self-evident). You therefore need to avoid vagueness and state the thesis with as much specificity as possible.

Format: All submitted papers should follow the Modern Language Association (MLA) guidelines for formatting a paper. These guidelines can be found in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th ed., which is available in the Reference Section of the library and in the Writing Center, but they are also summarized on pp. 148-150 of Diana Hacker’s Pocket Style Manual, with sample pages on pp. 151-154. When commenting on your essays, I will refer to Hacker on matters of format and style.

Following the MLA style, all papers should cite their sources on every occasion that they are used, and all paper should include a complete list of works cited.