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Essay Instructions: Why is Morganna portrayed as a witch character since she is the pagan religion Topic vs Christianity. Why would the authors of the Arthurian legend tales include the two sides - referenced the two sided xcalibar.

Essay Instructions: I need a term/research paper for a class on the evolution of the Arthurian legend between the twelfth and thirteenth century, when works featuring the Briton king and his knights grew in popularity.

The paper should include literary and close-text analysis of at least a few of the primary sources listed here below, as well as some discussion of the historical, political, cultural or literary forces that can explain and contextualize certain literary innovations to the story of Arthur throughout these works.

The paper should focus on the evolution of a certain motif or theme in a few of the texts listed below (or a contrast between the presentation of the topic in one of the earliest texts below and one of the latest ones, or between a British text and a French and/or Welsh one). Some of the recurrent topics in Arthurian legends are imperialism, heroism, love, religion, faithfulness (loyalty, troth, truth, promises-- conjugal/between lord and vassals/etc) and the supernatural.

Alternatively, the paper could explore the evolution of a character--its characterization, importance, etc--but only if you can make an argument of why this might have happened (again, appealing to a discusion of historical, political, cultural or literary forces, or the rising or declining popularity of a certain theme that makes that character important... something like that.

An interesting paper could also be the evolution of the female figure in the Arthurian legend, studying the progression in the treatment of different women in the texts. Again, it would be necessary to make some reference to either why this might have happened, or what effect it had in people's reading of these stories, and also why it is relevant for each of the texts discussed that women are represented the way they are.

Although this paper must give a sense of a holistic reading of a tradition, it should not lose depth, and claims should be backed up by either close-reading of the texts in questions (and citations) or historical documents.

If you need to write more pages for this to be the case (and if you have the time to make it happen!) let me know and I will add additional pages to my order. Just shoot me a message--I will be in front of my computer until tomorrow evening, so don't worry about the time, if you have any question at all.

Please don't include "filler paragraphs" though!

I would love you forever if you could let me know what your thesis/topic is going to be once you have read some material and come up with an idea. That way, I can use my access to JSTOR to upload documents for you, and can even scan relevant pages of some of my books on the Arthurian legend. I just can't do this without knowing what the topic will be, and I don't have access to JSTOR via username and password, so I can't give that to you for you to access the database yourself.

Here are the primary texts you can use (don't worry about the edition-- use whichever you can find; they are all probably in google books or iTunes for free):

Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain (1135)

The Mabinogion, select a few (1060-1200)

Wace, Roman de Brut, select passages in new translation (1155)

Chrètien de Troyes, Erec and Enide, Cline translation (1169-81)

Béroul, Tristan (late 12th century)

Marie de France, Lais of Marie de France (1170s or 80s) ??" lanval

Quest for the Holy Grail (Vulgate Cycle), Penguin edition (1215-30)

Death of King Arthur (Vulgate Cycle), Penguin edition (1215-30)


Here are some secondary sources that could be useful, but I don't know if you can get your hands on them on such short notice. I have a couple of them though, so if you tell me the topic, I will look for relevant parts and scan them:

Robert Hanning, The Vision of History in Early Britain from Gildas to Geoffrey of Monmouth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966).

Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History, ed. Roger Sherman Loomis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959).

Alberto Varvaro, Béroul's Romance of Tristran, trans. John C. Barnes (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1963).

R. Howard Bloch, The Anonymous Marie de France (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003).


THANK YOU SO MUCH, and good luck. Please be in touch with me as you go along, and I'm here to answer any question!



There are faxes for this order.

Essay Instructions: There are three essay questions. Please address each in a single page essay. Be as thorough as need be without sacrificing brevity and auccinctness.
1.) The Odyssey is an epic poen with an epic hero. Please explain what the most important characteristics of the poem and hero are that make this statement true. Include all the appropriate elements of fiction plus any language and literary devices.(irony, media res ...)

2.) The Arthurian Legend originally was from the oral tradition of literature. Later it became a medieval Literary Romance. Briefly explain what the characteristics of this form of the Romance.

3.) Please compare the Odyssey and Arthurian heoes in the following areas:
a.) roundness of character
b.) sense of family and homeland
c.) pride, both at the beginning and end of the stories

Essay Instructions: I need a model paper for a graduate level class in English on Arthurian Literature focusing on the character of Sir Gawain. I wish to focus on the Pearl poet''s portrayal of Sir Gawain in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" in relation to previous French and English portrayals that increasingly over time, portrays Sir Gawain as a lech and a rapist. The Pearl (Gawain) poet obviously does not do so. He shows us a very young Arthurian court (the Green knight calls them "beardless children") and a young and idealistic Gawain. Gawain is tested and found wanting to a certain degree and the Arthurian court and their belief in the ideal of the perfect knight is found wanting. Why would the Pearl poet give us a young court and a young Gawain, especially after the court and Gawain had been increasingly portrayed as dysfunctional (to put it nicely) by writers previous to the Pearl poet? I wish to argue (my ultimate thesis) that the Pearl Poet, in operating from a point in history that had seen a number of versions of Arthurian literature and legend, takes this opportunity to examine what went wrong with Arthur''s court and to do so, he posits this very young Arthurian court as a way of showing that the court was doomed from the beginning. In essence, the seeds for its'' failure were sown in its infancy in the form of a code of conduct and thought that no Knight could possibly live up to (think pentangle), but that they believed they could. In this regard, the Pearl poet is engaging in a bit of revisionist history. From the Pearl poet''s intensely Christian perspective, they are ultimately doomed because they elevate themselves to God-like, or Christ-like figures, i.e., able to obtain perfection by living up to a code of perfection, which of course they cannot. Gawain''s failing of the Pentangle and knightly code (he took the green girdle for one thing) and his subsequent disillusionment can be seen as the beginning of the end for Gawain and Arthur''s court (remember that Arthur''s lavish court sees the Green Girdle that Gawain brings back as a fashion statement, not as a sign of Gawain''s failing).
The paper needs to be 15 pages and should have around 10 cited sources. This means at the very least 10 (I would prefer a few more than that) quotes and parenthetical citations from various Arthurian texts and their critics within the body of the paper. Please stay away from so-called "critical theory". I find "theorists" and their various posturings as merely intellectually bankrupt academic fashion statements, hence no new historicism, post-colonialism, deconstruction (all but dead now anyway) queer theory, etc. When I do include theorists in my papers, I do so simply to mock them (it''s fun!). The Arthurian texts should be in translation, i.e., modern english, not the original French or Middle English. Stick some examples in of Gawain''s increasingly unpleasant behavior from these other Arthurian texts as a way of forgrounding and providing a nice contrast to the Pearl Poet''s version of Gawain and Arthur''s court. I hope I have provided a good spec to work from. Thank you, if you have any questions e-mail me at