"November" by Thomas Hood, 1844

No sun - no moon!
No morn - no noon -
No dawn - no dusk - no proper time of day.
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member -
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! -
November!

24.X. Final paper topics--due 17 December. Please find a time to meet with me before the end of term to discuss your final paper. You do not need to use secondary sources (except for some topics), but you can if you like.

1. Choose your own topic. It must deal with one of the works we have read in class, and I must approve it. If it hasn't been approved, then I won't accept your paper.

2. Of what larger significance are the internal parallelisms of Beowulf? Comment on at least two major parallels, and discuss how these contribute to one or some of the poem's themes.

3. Why is the Finnsburg story in Beowulf placed where it is?

4. How does the Pardoner's Tale correspond thematically to the Pardoner's Prologue?

5. The Wife of Bath's Tale seems to suggest that the masculine discourse within which the knight rapes the maiden is reapplied at the end as the hag transforms into a young woman. What has the knight's quest accomplished that complicates this claim? And how does that quest speak to the Wife's Prologue?

6. What are the sources of the Wife of Bath's Tale and how has Chaucer changed them? To what effect?

7. How is the Faust myth manifested in a contemporary literary work? Compare the myth in Marlowe with its appearance in any contemporary work (please confirm with me first).

8. The Book of Genesis tells the story of Adam and Eve. Hebrew and Christian interpreters have commented on this story for centuries. Choose two or more commentaries (one must be Protestant, preferably Anglican) and describe how Milton has changed or affirmed the interpretations in Book 9 of Paradise Lost.

9. What is wit, and how did two women poets of the seventeenth century react to a wider sense of literary wit?

10. Marvell's Mower poems seem to indicate a romanticization of the agricultural worker and of the poor in general. What social and political circumstances may have Marvell been reacting to in his choice of subject? Or, does Marvell use the mower and the agricultural worker allegorically? If so, to what end?

11. Herbert advocates balance in one of his poems, and, in the first chapter of his Redress of Poetry, Seamus Heaney agrees. Describe Heaney's point, and explain how balance--or a lack of it--works in other poems we have read (notably, Beowulf).

12. Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale speaks to the question of authority, as does the Wife of Bath. Neither age nor youth are sufficient markers of authority. What makes something authoritative? How do some of the poems we have read this year address this issue?

13. Using Kerrigan's description of meter, show how the versification of one or more of the poems we have read contributes to its theme or themes.

3.XII. Extra Credit. Due to scheduling difficulties with the quizzes, I will be offering extra credit. It is worth one quiz grade. (This means you can drop your lowest quiz grade, and also replace one quiz grade with extra credit.)

Compose a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter, keeping exactly to the stanza divisions (no enjambment over the stanza limits). No poetic license is permitted: this must be formally pristine and grammatically flawless. Points will be awarded as follows (out of 20 total): 10 for poetic form (esp. meter); 5 for three distinct ideas, a volta, and a snappy couplet; and 5 for replicating baroque style.

11.XII. Missed Quiz. Due to the overwhelming effect of Donne, I neglected to give quiz 5 today. For those of you who did the (one sonnet) extra credit but have no quizzes to which to apply it, I'll apply it to the midterm.