Arthurian Literature and its Legacy
First Assessed Essay Questions 2014-15
For students taking this module as fully assessed or 50/50: please submit a 5000 word essay
in answer to one the following questions, by 12 noon, Tuesday 13th January 2015 (week 2,
term 2). Please remember to fill in and attach a cover sheet, and also to make an electronic
submission by the same time.
1. Explore Geoffrey of Monmouth’s purpose in constructing the Arthurian section of
History of the Kings of Britain, in particular the way in which he refracts
contemporary political agendas.
2. Compare the representation of inter-generational affinities and tensions between
parents and children in Geoffrey’s Historia and EITHER Chretien’s Arthurian
romances OR Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan.
3. Explore the theme of reciprocity in Chretien de Troyes’ Arthurian romances.
4. Discuss the proposition that the questing landscape of Chretien’s Arthurian romances
is principally a psychological one, conceived in terms of the protagonist’s mind.
5. Compare Chretien’s treatment of poverty in The Knight with the Lion with Sir
Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal.
6. Compare Marie de France’s representation of gender with ONE other Arthurian
author studied this term.
7. To what degree is consistency in characterisation sacrificed to the requirements of
plot development in Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan?
8. Explore the role of the narrator in Gottfried’s Tristan.
9. Examine the relation of music, art, artefact and artifice to the experience of love in
Gottfried’s Tristan.
10. How do the Middle English Gawain romances represent the English border with
Scotland?
11. Discuss the theme of metamorphosis in any two Middle English Gawain romances.
12. Compare the grail and courtly love as loci of transcendence in any two or three 12th c
Arthurian narratives.
13. In what ways do the Grail narratives refract ecclesiastical and/or political agendas of
the late 12th and early 13th centuries?
14. Compare the symbolic landscapes of Chretien’s romances and the anonymous Quest
of the Holy Grail.