Third Paper: Due November 24

Choose one of the following topics and write a brief paper (4-5 pages), following the guidelines in the course outline. As before, feel free to ask questions about these topics if anything's not clear to you. If you want to turn in a physical paper, it's due at the beginning of class on November 19; but if you want to take a few extra days and turn in the paper by e-mail, you have until midnight on Tuesday, November 24.

1. In part because of its closing tag ("hony soyt qui mal pence" -- "shame to him who finds evil here," or perhaps [more fully interpreted] "let the shame be to him who finds humility shameful"), which is also the motto of the Knights of the Garter, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has been read as a manual of chivalry. Taking it this way, describe the characteristics of the perfect medieval knight and compare these qualities to those exhibited by Aeneas in Virgil's Aeneid. Note the similarities and differences and comment on how those similarities and differences reveal shifts in underlying cultural values regarding the hero and his place in society.

2. As different as they are, 1-2 Samuel and Sophocles' Oedipus have one thing in common. At a crucial point in each story the central figure is confronted by a prophet or seer who suggests that all is not right with the central figure -- that he is guilty of something he does not recognize. We've already looked closely at the Oedipus/Tiresias exchange in Oedipus the King; now look closely at the David/Nathan exchange in 2 Samuel, and at David's reaction as recorded in Psalm 51. What does this exchange tell you about David's character? Does it enable you to draw any conclusions about "Hebrew values"? What are they? Is David -- transgressions and all -- a hero? Why or why not?

3. In his preface to Samson Agonistes Milton discusses his own conception of classical tragedy as "the gravest, moralest, and most profitable" of all poetry, and he goes on to endorse Aristotle's notion that tragedy should effect a catharsis of the emotions of "pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions." Milton ends his tragedy by having the chorus exclaim:

   His servants he with new aquist
   Of true experience from this great event
   With peace and consolation hath dismissed
   And calm of mind, all passion spent.

   How has Milton altered or adapted classical tragedy to his own purposes? Referring specifically to the plays of Sophocles -- as well, of course, as the events and structure of Samson Agonistes -- discuss the similarities and differences you see between Milton's conception and the classical tragedies we have read.