<p>Further Explorations in Medieval Literature First Assessed Essay Questions 2016-17</p><p>For students taking this module as fully assessed: please submit a 5000 word essay in answer to one of the following questions, by 12 noon, Tuesday 10th January (week 1, term 2). 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.</p><p>1. Explore Sir Orfeo and Sir Degare as reworkings of classical myth.</p><p>1. To what extent do Christian values coalesce with chivalric values in the Middle English romances? Answer with reference to at least two romances.</p><p>1. Examine the role of appetite and consumption in Sir Gowther and Havelok the Dane.</p><p>1. ‘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?</p><p>2. ‘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.</p><p>3. What is the purpose of the confrontation between the familiar court and faerie Otherworld? Answer with reference to two or more romances.</p><p>4. Explore Chaucer’s use of space and setting in Troilus and Criseyde.</p><p>5. Discuss the theme of fortune OR of ‘trouthe’ in Troilus and Criseyde.</p><p>6. Discuss attitudes towards books and authorities in Troilus and Criseyde.</p><p>7. ‘The double sorrow is a formal and thematic design which presents the story by means of a structure of correspondences between later and earlier books, so that the remembering reader perceives patterns forming and developing in time’ (Windeatt). Write an essay exploring the use of patterns in Troilus and Criseyde.</p><p>8. Explore EITHER Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid as a response to Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde OR Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde as a response to Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato.</p>