English Epic - First Essay

EN210: Special Topics: English Epic

First Essay Assignment

The first essay is due at the beginning of class on Friday, March 9. The essay should be about 6-7 pages long. You may write on any of the poems that we have studied so far in the course. Here are some suggested topics:

On Beowulf:

Beowulf is the hero of Beowulf. What makes him heroic? Discuss the poem’s presentation of heroism. Be sure to let the poem define heroism for itself; don’t impose a preconceived idea of what is heroic onto this ancient text. Be especially attentive to how the story complicates or challenges its own ideas of heroism, and whether their might be different kinds of heroes or different types of heroism for different times and situations.
Discuss the representation of women in Beowulf. Consider such characters as Hildeburh, Wealhtheow, and even Grendel’s mother, since the question is not so much what women are like as what femininity is perceived as being. You might also consider how female characters are used to define proper masculine behavior in Anglo-Saxon society. Pay special attention to ways in which conventional gender roles are challenged or re-affirmed.
Throughout Beowulf, both the narrator and the characters alternately declare their belief in divine providence that guides events purposefully and benevolently and fate that determines human events arbitrarily and amorally. Which of these two views do you find to be dominant in the poem as a whole? How do you understand the posture of the Christian poet in relation to the pagan characters?
W.P. Ker, an eminent critic, wrote long ago, "The fault of Beowulf is that there is nothing much in the story. The hero is occupied in killing monsters, like Hercules and Theseus. But there are other things in the lives of Hercules and Theseus besides the killing of the Hydra or of Procrustes. Beowulf has nothing else to do, when has killed Grendel and Grendel’s mother in Denmark: he goes home to his own land, until at last the rolling years bring the Fire-drake and his last adventure. It is too simple." J.R.R. Tolkien responded, "I would suggest… that the monsters are not an inexplicable blunder of taste; they are essential, fundamentally allied to the underlying ideas of the poem, which give it its lofty tone and high seriousness." Who is right? Study the role of one of the three monsters, or of all three. Explain the function of the monster or monsters in the plot and its or their significance to the poem’s themes.

On Sir Gawain and the Green Knight:

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight seems to be particularly interested in signs, symbols, and the act of interpretation. Analyze the nature and function of signs and symbols in the poem, such as the Pentangle, the Green Girdle, and/or the greenness of the knight. 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. 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.
Consider chivalry itself as theme in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 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?

On The Faerie Queene:

Choose one episode from Spenser’s epic and analyze it in depth, explaining the specific details that Spenser provides, the meaning of the full episode, and how the episode dramatizes themes and employs strategies important to the work as a whole. Make sure that your analysis is guided by a specific thesis. Here are some of the episodes you might choose:

Canto 1: The Cave of Error
Canto 2: Fradubbio and Fraelissa
Canto 3: Abessa and Corceca
Cantos 4-5: The House of Pride
Canto 6: The Satyres and/or Satyrane
Cantos 7-8: Orgoglio
Canto 8: The Stripping of Duessa
Canto 9: The Den of Despair
Canto 10: The House of Holiness
Cantos 11-12: Redcrosse Battles the Dragon

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 in Hacker & Sommers, A Pocket Style Manual. 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.