The lame-ass post of a burned-out lit student

[tzikeh]

I have *one more paper* to write for this semester. All my final exams are taken; all of my other papers are in. The paper I need to write is for Survey of British Literature Part One: Medieval Anglo-Saxon Works through Seventeenth Century Metaphysical Poets. The paper only has to be six freaking pages, *double-spaced*, for goodness' sake, and I am drawing a complete blank. I don't even have to prove my thesis, just show thoughtful development. It's not even a research paper--just a close reading of a piece or pieces we've covered. I can't use anything but the materials we've read.


Venerable Bede (selections)
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (selections)
Exeter Book Elegies
Beowulf (in a truly exhaustingly poor translation)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Selections from Canterbury Tales (General Prologue, Miller's Prologue and Tale, Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale)
Wakefield Second Shepherd's Play
Wyatt and Surrey's translations and Englishings of Petrarchan sonnets, and then a few of their own
Sidney's Astrophil and Stella (just a few pieces)
Spenser's Amoretti (selections), Shakespeare's sonnets (selection)
John Donne (Good Morrow, Sun Rising, Flea, Valediction Forbidding Mourning, Elegy 19, To His Mistress Going to Bed, Holy Sonnets 6 and 10)
George Herbert (Redemption, Easter Wings, Prayer 1, Jordan 1 & 2, The Windows, The Collar, Love)
Robert Herrick (Argument of his Book, Delight in Disorder, His Farewell to Sack, Corinna's Gone A-Maying, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, The Hock-Cart, Upon Julia's Clothes)
Andrew Marvell (To His Coy Mistress, Mower Against Gardens, The Garden)

All I need is a freaking thesis. It doesn't have to be complex; it just needs to be thesis-like. The example the professor gave was "The role of women as portrayed in "The Wife's Lament (Exeter Elegy) and "The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale" differs greatly due to the genre of these works as well as each woman's social status."

My first two close readings were "The Wife's Lament as compared to the other Exeter Elegies; internal vs. external journeying", and "The role of the natural world in Wyatt and how it differs from Surrey's use of it". Easy-peasy, made sense, whipped them off in no time.

IT'S THAT STRAIGHTFORWARD. And I can't think of a fucking thing.

Help? Seriously. Any ideas at all might spark something.

Comments

[amireal.livejournal.com]

Common themes:

Love
Family
Friendship
Filial stuff (Brotherhood)
Saintliness
Sex
Courtly love (am reaching now)
Parent/child
The nature of beauty

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Well, that narrows it down. :-D

I like the idea of the nature of beauty, actually. Hm.

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

The concept of virginity in Donne, Herbert, Herrick, Marvell: How important is it? What is it -- i.e. what counts as sex? Can men be virgins?

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Ohhh, virgins. Get with the program. Too much poetry, not enough sexx0ring.

[bethbethbeth.livejournal.com]

*Something to do with images of sex and sexuality in Marvell's "...Coy Mistress," Donne's "The Flea," and...Shakespeare? (especially if you're doing Sonnet 144).

Woman as witch/temptress in "Sir Gawain..." and "The Wife of Bath's Tale."

A queer reading of "Sir Gawain..." (because Gawain/Bertilak = OTP!)

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

The women thing was on our second exam. Queer reading of Gawain? Interesting!

[kadymae.livejournal.com]

I happened to take my 400 and 700 level survey of Early and Medieval lit courses from Dr. John Bowers (http://english.unlv.edu/faculty/facpages/bowers.htm). If you take a look at his CV he's sure got a lot to say about the Pardoner/the Summoner.

Ours was a very queer reading of Gawain indeed.

(In fact, I showed him that Gawain/Green Knight story somebody wrote for yuletide about 4 years ago. He loved it.)

[yahtzee63.livejournal.com]

Sex and death are inextricably intertwined in early British literature?

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Woody Allen: A Man Behind his Time. (Love and Death, right?)

This definitely could work.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

If you've got the whole Exeter Book there, you might do two readings of "Wulf and Eadwacer," considering it as one of the elegies and as one of the riddles.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Tragically, not the whole Exeter Book -- it's a survey class.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

Ooh, or maybe compare the narrator's voices in any two or three of the Exeter Book elegies. If the Bede selections included the Caedmon episode, you could bring that in, too.

Or maybe compare poetic conceptions of the past in any two or three of The Ruin, Widsith, Deor, and some of the historical interludes in Beowulf? Or if you wanted to get more technical, you could talk about the refrain in Deor and the sort of semi-refrain in Wulf and Eadwacer.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

compare the narrator's voices in any two or three of the Exeter Book elegies

My first paper was on that. ;)

Poetic conceptions of the past might work....

[kadymae.livejournal.com]

compare and contrast the treatment of human nature/human failing in Beowulf and Gawain?

compare and contrast the hero's journey in Beowulf & Gawain. How do they fit and deviate from the norm?

compare and contrast ideas about holyness, redemption, the nature of god in Bede, Wakefield, Donne and Herbert.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

The first two were exam essays, so no dice there.

The redemption and God from Medieval to Renaissance might work though!

[vass]

I am no help at all:

5. How angry would you be if it was suggested
(1) that the XIth Chap. of the Consolations of Boethius was an interpolated palmpsest?
(2) That an eisteddfod was an agricultural implement?

6. How would you attempt to deal with
(a) The Venomous Bead
(b) A Mabinogion or Wapentake? (Be quick.)

(1066 And All That is full of such important questions.)

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

I adore that book!

[elance.livejournal.com]

Courtly, Holy, Passionate: Love as perceived by Marvell, Herbert, and Donne

Images of Nature in the poems of Donne, Herbert, Herrick, and Marvell

Women In a Man's World: Beowulf's Female Side

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

I done did do nature in Wyatt and Surrey; not sure I could get away with using that thesis a second time.

The variety of takes on love as portrayed by those poets is an interesting idea, and I'm skipping the Beowulf because our translation is just DEATHLY.

[the-shoshanna.livejournal.com]

"Oh hi, I upgraded your language!"

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

...

For the win.