Focus on material wealth

  There’s an intense focus on material wealth, the status it accords, and various types of material exchange in the works we’ve read thus far. In a detailed, thoughtful essay supported by textual examples, discuss how material objects are represented, the degree to which they are valued, what kinds of cultural meanings they carry, and how they affect human and social relationships in Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and either The Miller’s Tale/Prologue or The Wife of Bath’s Tale/Prologue. Does the importance of material exchange and status transform over the course of the works we have studied? What conclusions do you think each of the works arrive at concerning materialism, greed, or perhaps the possibility of upward mobility through various kinds of exchange? 2. 2. Three famous quotes about heroes: a) “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy,” b) “There are heroes in evil as well as in good,” c) “A hero is someone who has given his or her life for something bigger than oneself.” Choose one of these quotes as your primary definition/starting point for a consideration of a heroic character from Beowulf, Sir Gawain, and either The Miller’s Prologue/Tale or The Wife of Bath’s Prologue/Tale. In a detailed, thoughtful essay supported by textual examples, discuss the heroic qualities these characters possess and how they exercise those qualities in their specific social/cultural worlds. What benefits does their heroism create for themselves and/or their societies. What’s heroic about these heroes’ goals? Do they sometimes fail or show weakness? How do these failures or weaknesses affect their status as heroes? 3. 3. In medieval literature, women are often idealized as impossibly perfect love objects, shown primarily in subordinate roles to men, or curiously absent from major events in a given text. However, in any relationship between an “oppressor” (in this case, patriarchal culture) and an “oppressed” (women), power struggles, cultural anxieties, and manipulations flow in both directions. In a detailed, thoughtful essay supported by textual examples, discuss the representation of women, the ways in which they are socially marginalized and/or negatively stereotyped, whether they conform to or break free from their traditional social roles/paradigms, and how they manage to disrupt or transform those roles/paradigms in order to exercise power, influence, or choice (if they indeed do). Discuss female characters from the following texts: Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, “The Miller’s Prologue/Tale,” and/or “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue/Tale.”