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Essay Instructions: Take any event, Character, or description from the canto's 11 and 12 of the Faerie Queen that you think offers a significant parallel to an earlier passage of Book 1(before canto 11). Develop an analysis and an Argument about what Spencer is doing withthis echo from the earlier scene and who and to what effect he transforms it at the end of the epic.

Essay Instructions: *****Requesting Writer's Username: Writergrrl101*****
~200- 250 words, essay on Sir Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book One.
~no works cited needed, just a few quotes cited directly from the text
~Prompt: Why must King Authur be the one to conquer Orgoglio and rescue the Red Cross Knight? Thanks, you're great!

Essay Instructions: The research paper should amount to roughly 2400 words, in 12 point Times New Roman. The topic should be some literary aspect of sixteenth-century English thought, whether religious or humanistic. Your approach should combine close analysis of the primary text(s) with commentary on pertinent scholarship: four relatively recent (since1970) scholarly essays will suffice. Make your essay lucid and persuasive as possible. River’s Christian and Classical Ideas in English Renaissance Poetry is a very good guide to the main idea and figure of the period. But you must incorporate research beyond Rivers, and as a general rule all secondary sources you consult should be listed in the MLA International Tertiary Bibliography (via Libraries Gateway), because they are likely to have been peer-reviewed. Tertiary sources (e.g. SparkNores, Wikipedia and encyclopaedias) are not acceptable critical resources.
Do not resort to plagiarism as a solution to your problem, no matter how big or small; I reserve the right to use plagiarism-detection’s software in suspicious cases. The penalty for plagiarism is 0 % for the assignment.

Sample topic sentence:
Edmund Spenser intended his Faerie Queene as a contribution to sixteenth-century humanistic literature aimed at perfecting courtiers.

Note that this sentence is already fairly focused. It doesn’t state obvious points like the fact that Spenser was an important Elizabethan poet or that his Faerie Queene was a great and complex poem. This topic sentence was written to introduce a paper exploring a specific aspect of that work. Logically, the introductory paragraph should continue by explaining just how sixteenth-century literature for courtiers sought to perfect them. It might offer a brief summary (via Isabel Rivers, for example) of Renaissance Stoicism as it appears in the highly influential Book of the Courtier.

At any rate, the eventual thesis statement should flow from the narrowing of the topic sentence; should appear on the first page, usually at the end of the first paragraph; and should advance a highly focused argument. The following is one example of an extended thesis statement (which need not be limited to one sentence):

Although Spenser incurred a heavy debt to Italian humanism, he was primarily interested in aligning English courtiers and courts with Protestant Christian morality. To this end, he wrote Book I of the Faerie Queene to promote love of holiness and religious truth as the noblest goal of the Reformation courtier. The Redcrosse Knight’s relationship with Una can be read as Spenser’s Protestant improvement on the more generally philosophical, Neoplatonic love familiar from the long speech of Peter Bembo in Hoby’s translation of Castiglione’s Cortigiano.

The hypothetical 2400 ??"word essay that followed from this introduction would restrict itself to perhaps three scenes from Faerie Queene I, would analyze those passages closely (citing and quoting directly to support individual arguments made by the student), and would supplement the analysis with reference to arguments made about Book I in recently published articles. If the secondary sources you consult confirm your own point of view, all fine and well; but the author of a truly dynamic research paper will engage published scholarship deeply- agreeing with other commentators for reasons of his or her own, but perhaps even disagreeing with them.

Here are few other tips that should enhance the overall quality of a paper:
Your essay should advance a claim about a text or author that has been deeply informed by your own analyses of the primary texts as well as your reading of pertinent scholarship. Don’t write a paper that is simply 50% your own opinions and 50% the arguments of scholars.

*****TOPICS ******
1. Tyndale’s New Testament translation as a politicized text
2. Elizabeth I’s manipulation of female identities
3. Wyatt’s (or Surrey’s) experiences at court as reflected in his poems
4. Spenser’s Protestant chivalry or Protestant take on courtly literature (The sample topic I provide about is permissible , but please don’t duplicate my examples of topic and thesis statements)
5. The meaning and limits of “women’s power” in the 1550s
6. Stoicism in literary terms (in Sidney’s Defence of Poesy or Hoby’s trans. Of Castiglione or in the poems we’ve read)
7. Shakespeare’s approach to Petrarchism in Venus and Adonis


Texts:
1. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century (8 th ed.) ISBN 0
2. Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene (Penguin, 1978) ISBN 2
3. Isabel Rivers, Classical and Christian Ideas in English Renaissance Poetry, 2 nd,ed. ISBN 8

Essay Instructions: This paper is a close reading of a passage of approximately 20-30 lines in length. The book where the story comes from is The Norton Anthology English Literature Seventh Edition Volume 1 and the story name is The Faerie Queene, Book 1, Canto 4. The stanzas I would like the paper to be on are 4,5, and 6. In the passage you should look for language sufficiently rich and complex to sustain detailed analysis, as well as a theme that provides an insight into or perspective on a character and or an important aspect of the poem, or a digression or episode whose relation to the poem is not clear. A close reading is not a paraphrase or description of a text, though some plot or even textual summary may be necessary to provide a context for your discussion. A close reading provides an analysis and interpretation of the language of the text, explaining to your reader something not immediately obvious on a first reading. The passages the paper is on is.....
4
A stately Pallace built of squared bricke,
Which cunningly was without morter laid,
30 Whose wals were high, but nothing strong, nor thick,
And golden foile all over them displaid,
That purest skye with brightnesse they dismaid:
High lifted up were many loftie towres,
And goodly galleries farre over laid,
35 Full of faire windowes, and delightfull bowres;
And on the top a Diall told the timely howres.

5
It was a goodly heape for to behould,
And spake the praises of the workmans wit;
But full great pittie, that so faire a mould
40 Did on so weake foundation ever sit:
For on a sandie hill, that still did flit,
And fall away, it mounted was full hie,
That every breath of heaven shaked it:
And all the hinder parts, that few could spie,
45 Were ruinous and old, but painted cunningly.

6
Arrived there they passed in forth right;
For still to all the gates stood open wide,
Yet charge of them was to a Porter hight
Cald Malvenu, who entrance none denide:
50 Thence to the hall, which was on every side
With rich array and costly arras dight:
Infinite sorts of people did abide
There waiting long, to win the wished sight
Of her, that was the Lady of that Pallace bright.