dentify a question that the readings this term have raised for you. What do you want to know more
about? What bothers you about what we’ve been reading? What area of confusion would you like to
dispel so that you better understand? This is your chance to explore a topic, theme or text that has caught
your interest this semester. It’s an opportunity for you to engage in extra reading that you might not
otherwise find the time to do. Once you’ve found a topic you like, narrow it down. Trust to details,
weighing them lovingly, and shuttle, with as much agility as possible, between minute observation and
testimony to the largest moods and concerns. These might range all over the map: from love to war, from
religion to economics, from technology to philosophy, from aesthetics to science. But the most strategic
way to get at these larger issues is by focusing on a theme or motif or rhetorical device.
Examples:
 Chivalry or Courtly Love in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
 Cannibals in Montaigne and Jean de Léry
 Attitudes to slavery in Thomas More’s Utopia
 Economics: How is commerce represented in a text we have read? How are money, markets and
investments portrayed? How does the author’s imagination mediate economic realities?
 Governance: How are polities governed in one or two texts we have read? How are these forms of
political authority portrayed? What legitimizes the sway of those who gain or wield power?
 Exclusion and Dissent: Certain voices are louder than others in these texts. Focus your analysis
on those whose voices are silenced, muted or heard only intermittently. How and why are they
marginalized? How are voices of protest or dissent represented?
 Religion: How are these European texts grappling with non-Christian religions? How do they
mediate the way other belief-systems and religions are relayed to European audiences? Or, you
can take another approach: how does Dante conceptualize sin?
 Gender: How is sexuality represented in one or two texts we have read? Compare and contrast
ways in which sexual desire is figured in these texts.
 Ecology and Environment: How are spaces in the natural world represented in a text? Consider
the role of hunting and the many ways animals figure.
Requirements:
The paper should take the form of a persuasive argument. Your thesis should make a provocative claim,
and your opening paragraph should address the “so what” question. (1) You must consult at least four
scholarly sources that investigate the socio-historical context of your topic. (2) Work one other
primary source into your analysis. By primary source, I mean another medieval or Renaissance text that
will shed light on your project.3) Come see me about your topic. (4) Provide a bibliography of workscited and consulted. Use the MLA format. Don’t take any shortcuts in terms of citation that could expose
you to charges of plagiarism. Give credit (to internet sources as well as to printed sources and helpful
friends or relatives), and you’ll be safe. (5) On April 22, plan to present your research to the claSuggestions:not be trusted either (