Further Explorations in Medieval Literature Second Assessed Essay Questions 2015-16
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All students taking this module: please submit a 5000 word essay by 12 noon, Tuesday 26th
April 2016 (week 1, term 3).
Students taking the module 50/50 should choose an essay question from the complete list of
questions.
Students taking the module as fully assessed should choose an essay question from nos.
14-27.
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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, C XII.75) 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. Explore Langland’s treatment of the theme of work.
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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.
14. Explore the role of books in any dream vision poem or poems.
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15. Explore the relationship of the earthly and the heavenly in any TWO or more dream
vision poems.
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16. Compare the treatment of fortune in at least TWO dream vision poems.
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17. ‘[T]he dream-poem becomes a device for expressing the poet’s consciousness of
himself as poet and for making his work reflexive’ (A. C. Spearing). Discuss any
dream vision poem or poems in the light of this statement.
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18. Discuss misreading and/or misinterpretation in any dream vision poem or poems.
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19. In what ways, and to what extent, do poets writing in Scotland offer a novel response
to Chaucer’s dream-poetry? You may write on either James I or Gavin Douglas or
both.
20. ‘Womb, tomb, castle, love-bower’. Explore spatial and architectural metaphors of the
anchorhold and the anchoritic body, and the ways in which they effect the
construction of female anchoritism in Ancrene Wisse.
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21. Compare the attitude adopted toward the act of seeing in Ancrene Wisse and Julian’s
Revelations.
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22. Compare the presentation of human sin OR divine love in Ancrene Wisse and Julian’s
Revelations.
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23. How do Julian AND/OR Margery Kempe negotiate the relation between their
religious experiences and orthodox church teaching in their respective texts?
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24. ‘While Margery’s meditations [on the life of Christ] are theatrical, often involving her
in action, Julian’s are painterly’ (Denise Baker). Discuss the role of imaginative
visualisation and performance in late medieval religious women’s writing.
25. To what extent is Margery Kempe’s Book an attempt to construct her life as a saintly
vita?
26. Explore the construction of sexuality in two or more female saints’ lives.
27. Explore the representation of female teaching in two or more of the texts studied in
this module unit.
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