Further Explorations in Medieval Literature First Assessed Essay Questions 2014-15
For students taking this module as fully assessed: please submit a 5000 word essay in answer
to one the following questions, by 12 noon, Tuesday 6th January 2015 (week 1, term 2).
Please remember to fill in and attach a cover sheet, and also to make an electronic submission
by the same time.
Students taking the module 50/50 will submit their essay in week 1, term 3, using these
questions together with a second set generated from the works studied in term 2.
1. Explore Sir Orfeo and Sir Degare as reworkings of classical myth.
2. To what extent do Christian values coalesce with chivalric values in the Middle
English romances? Answer with reference to at least two romances.
3. Examine the role of appetite and consumption in Sir Gowther and Havelok the Dane.
4. ‘The Middle English Breton lays replace exposition with elegant symbolism’
(Furnish, adapted). What is the function of the concrete symbols (harp, falchion,
gloves etc.) at the centre of these lays?
5. Discuss the role of ‘doubling’ or ‘mirroring’ in relation to the structure and/or content
of any two or three romances.
6. ‘Romances are uniquely able to open up a discursive space for the expression of
England as a nation’ (Faletra, adapted). Discuss with reference to Havelok the Dane.
7. What is the purpose of the confrontation between the familiar court and faerie
Otherworld? Answer with reference to two or more romances.
8. ‘Langland was more focused upon what he wanted to say than on how he said it’
(Hoyt N. Duggan). Do you agree?
9. ‘Ye, baw for bokes!’ (Piers Plowman, XI.140) Explore attitudes towards books and
learning in Piers Plowman.
10. Anne Middleton has written of the tendency of narrative episodes in Piers Plowman
to end in ‘discord and irresolution’. Discuss either discord or irresolution, or both, in
Piers Plowman.
11. ‘Ac if ther were any wight that wolde me telle
What were Dowel and Dobet and Dobest at the laste,
Wolde I never do werk, but wende to holi chirche
And there bidde my bedes but whan ich ete or slepe.’ (Piers Plowman, XII.25–28)
Explore Langland’s treatment of the theme of work.
12. Does Piers Plowman offer only spiritual solutions to worldly problems?
13. ‘He not only puns more frequently than any poet before Shakespeare, he uses the pun
in a serious and often vividly illuminating way’ (A. V. C. Schmidt). Discuss the ways
in which Langland exploits the multiple meanings of words in the light of this
statement.