Dr. Goldstein

ENGL 4610

Fall 2003

Essay 2 (due 11/21)

For the second essay assignment you must write on one of the topics below, unless you get my approval for a new topic after consultation in conference.  Your essay should be a well-organized, thoughtful, and lucidly written critical or research essay of five to eight pages double-spaced, with one inch margins, in 12-point Times Roman font.  Please number the pages and fasten them with a staple or paper clip.  The essay must be original (your own work, and not previously submitted).

By critical essay, I mean an interpretive essay that analyzes and interprets the textual evidence of one or more primary literary texts (e.g. Yvain) to support an arguable claim (debatable thesis).  If your paper is a critical essay on one or more of the primary texts we have read, you don’t need to provide a works cited page listing the syllabus text(s), though you may do so if you wish.  You do need to provide parenthetical citations of page numbers (for prose texts) or lines (for poems) for each quotation, paraphrase or summary. 

By research essay, I mean an essay that draws on one or more credible secondary sources (scholarship).  Academic honesty requires all of your borrowings from a secondary source to be properly documented in MLA style (see the statement on plagiarism in the syllabus).  Don’t forget that everyone is free to draw on Pearsall’s textbook, but you must properly document any borrowing from him just as you would from any other source. 

In most cases, research papers will also be interpretive analytical essays on literary texts, but given the nature of Arthurian studies, some topics are possible where the primary evidence is not limited to narrative sources (e.g. archeology).  If you decide to do research, you may draw on research from the group presentations (i.e., you could pursue the same topic as the research you conducted for your group presentation and explore in greater depth the relevant secondary literature; if you are really keen on one of the presentation topics that another group was assigned, that would be fine, too, though you’d have more catching up to do).

Students who want help with their essays are encouraged to set up a conference with the instructor or to visit the English Center (HC 3183; 844-5749).  If you have any questions about the nature of the assignment or your topic, please see me as soon as possible.  I would be happy to discuss your work in progress in conference, clarify the expectations for the assignment, or recommend secondary sources for students who choose a research option.  (I have placed on three-day reserve in the library a short list of important research materials for the course; the list of books on reserve is available through the library’s website under “Reserves.”)

Again, papers will be evaluated  with the following questions in mind:

• Does the essay make a specific claim that is debatable?  How insightful and original is the claim?
• Does the essay support the claim with effective use of quotations and other textual evidence (specific references to the text)?  If a research essay, does the research cited effectively advance the argument and are all the borrowings properly documented?
• Does the essay avoid unnecessary plot summary?
• Are the individual paragraphs coherent, sufficiently developed, and connected with smooth and logical transitions?
• Is the textual evidence cited accurately?  Remember to give specific page references in parentheses for every quotation or reference to a prose translation of a primary text; if our prose translation includes references to line numbers of a poetic text (e.g. Yvain), it is helpful to include these too.  If you are citing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, cite by line numbers only.
• Is the writing clear and accurate, avoiding misused words, errors of syntax, grammar, and spelling?

Topics

1. Many readers believe the ending of Yvain (the reconciliation of Laudine and Yvain) is artistically flawed.  Write an essay that either argues for or against the narrative coherence of the ending.  How does the ending of the poem raise questions for critical interpretation, and how would you propose we address them?
2. Assuming (as most scholars do) that the ultimate source of the lion in Yvain comes from the classical story of Androcles and the lion, what contribution to the poem does the transplanted figure of the lion make to the specific interests of this chivalric romance?  Note: the topic is not asking you to research or discuss the older story, just to be aware that the lion could be seen here as a kind of “guest” invitee in the new context of a twelfth-century chivalric narrative.
3. Write an essay focused on the role of the main female characters in Yvain.  One thing you might consider is whether their portrayal seems to confirm or challenge gender stereotypes of the period, or whether you think they do both at the same time (and how).
4. Write an essay focused on the importance of ritual, rule, and ceremony in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
5. Write a feminist interpretive analysis of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to show how it might broaden our understanding of the poem.  What would a feminist reading have us notice about the poem that another type of interpretation might not pay attention to?  By engaging the text from a feminist critical perspective, be sure to make clear what you mean by “feminist.”
6. Peggy Knapp makes the following observation about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: “In one text, it tells two quite different stories—one about a great knight, recounted in the genre of romance, the other about a penitent Christian, recounted in the genre of exemplum or moral fable.  Which story readers see depends on which set of details they bring to the foreground and how they link those details together.”  Drawing on her insight, discuss the implications of this idea of generic mixture in the poem.  Be sure to decide if you think one or the other of these two kinds of  “stories” should receive interpretive priority over the other and why or why not.
7. Basing your argument on some well-chosen examples of close textual analysis from one or more episodes, write an essay on the relation of Malory’s style of narration to his literary meaning.  Pearsall gives you an excellent starting place in his description of Malory’s style and narrative technique: “His narrative techniques are correspondingly self-effacing, and characterized by simple but evocatively repetitive diction; stylized colloquial syntax and intonation; the minimum of descriptive visualization; expression of character through gesture, direct speech and dialogue rather than through analysis or comment; and very rare intervention by the narrator, and that mostly of a laconic and impersonal kind” (89).
8. What literary elements make the last two tales in Malory into a kind of tragedy?  What is the significance of  his ending his grand synthesis with such a tragedy?  (Keep in mind that he is a transmitter not an originator of this ending, but he does tell the story in his own distinctive way.)
9. Write an essay interpreting the differing conceptions of Sir Kay (Cai in Welsh, Keu in Old French) in Welsh tradition, in Chrétien (perhaps including Perceval), and in Malory.
10. Any of the above topics could also be treated as a research project.  In addition, you could pursue any of the research questions from the presentations as a topic for a research essay.

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