Paper #2

Choose one of the following topics for a paper due Thursday, October 7 (for all sections, including those not normally meeting on Thursday). Use only your ability to interpret and explain the text itself. Do not look online for supplemental information.

Topic 1

Using only the evidence of Paradise Lost, Book 9, lines 834 – 1189 (N.B. Not all of these lines were assigned or discussed in class), describe the relationship between Adam and Eve as Milton presents it.

Topic 2

After his final encounter with the Green Knight, Gawain takes the green belt because he will “remember with shame the faults and the frailty of the flesh perverse, how its tenderness entices the foul taint of sin.” Yet Arthur and his court celebrate Gawain and “agree with gay laughter and gracious intent that the lords and the ladies . . .a baldric should have . . of a bright green, to be worn with one accord for that worthy’s sake.”

In your opinion, is the green belt a symbol of Gawain’s failure or of his worth as a knight? Support your interpretation with brief references to the text.

Notes

• As before, use only the assigned reading as a source. Do not seek additional material from any secondary source.
• Papers are due Thursday, October 7 for all sections, both hard copy and turnitin.com.
• For quoted material, use parenthetical line numbers rather than pages.
• Suggested lengths: 750 words (2-3 pages) for English IV, 1000 words (3-4 pages) for AP students.
• Check here for important reminders about heading, format, and style.
  

Blog assignment #5--Sept 22-26

Please complete before Monday, September 27:

Post at least 5 comments on the most recent blogs left by your classmates last week. Remember, these blogs were either oral presentations or alternative points of view for specific scenes in Beowulf.

Each comment you post should be 3 or 4 "meaty" sentences (thank you, Dr. A).

Be as specific as you can. Point out choices the writer made that you admired. Point out ideas or facts or sentences you enjoyed. Point out things you wouldn't have thought of yourself. Since our blogs are public and this is an assignment, your job is not to be snarky, ironic, sarcastic, or "smack" talk your friends and classmates. Your goal here is to be an appreciative member of someone else's reading public, so that we all have the opportunity to experience writing for a real audience.

Remember, links to everyone's blog can be found on mine. Also, to avoid anyone being inadvertently neglected, please do NOT post a comment on someone's blog that already has 5 existing comments. Move on to someone else's. (You can, of course, avoid this particular issue by being among the first to post your comments.) If you wish to post MORE than 5 comments, you may then go back and post anywhere, even those entries which already have 5.

Any questions?

Sample test questions

ID's--Breca, Freawaru, "forgyf us ure gyltas," semantics, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Heatho-Bards

Passages--give specific context (speaker and situation) and explain the significance of a passage to the work as a whole:
"Let whoever can win glory before death. When a warrior is gone, that will be his best and only bulwark. So arise, my lord, and let us immediately set forth on the trail of this troll-dam."

Essay--two paragraphs providing examples and brief discussion of a topic: "One essential quality of an epic is that it depicts the most important customs of a culture. What customs of Germanic culture are given greatest emphasis in the poem?

Blog 4--September 20

Take a look at Beowulf through a pair of eyes other than your own. Pretend to be one of the following characters and write in that voice. Stay true to the content of the poem, but be creative in your presentation of the point of view you choose.

1. You are Wiglaf. Describe your thoughts at the funeral of Beowulf. What thoughts and feelings are going through your mind and heart?

2. You are the Danish coast guard. Describe the arrival of Beowulf and the Geats, including your thoughts and impressions.

3. You are Hreporter, correspondent for Hrothgar's Heroic Herald, otherwise known as the Danish Daily Dispatch. Write your account of the victory feast and celebration following Beowulf's killing of Grendel.

4. Choose another minor character and re-create that character's part of the story in first-person point of view.

Mea Culpa

I forgot that the chowderheads who publish the vocab book redid the quizzes so that they now cover two, not three, lessons at a whack. So the first quiz is lessons 1 & 2, the next 3 & 4, and so on.

Our apologies for any confusion or inconvenience--The Management