1.Dante “built” his version of hell utilizing rather equal measures of Roman Catholic doctrine and his own personal perspective regarding the guilt or innocence of the people he put there (his personal perspective seems sometimes rather vindictive). Pick one character who seems to be in hell for reasons the Catholic church of that time would approve, and one or two who seem to be there simply because Dante was “getting even.” Explain how this is so in each case using details from the poem as well as from whatever historical sources you wish to utilize. 2.We know by now that lyric poems are likely to have many characteristics in common with one another whenever and wherever they have been written. Certainly, the conditions of life in imperial China must have been in many ways quite different from the circumstances of life in Sappho’s Greece, or in the Nile Valley of the Egyptian love poems. Contrast their poetic styles, temperaments, subject matter, and general attitudes in a way that shows that you understand how it is that these poets are all lyric (not heroic) poets and yet quite different from one another in their personal concerns and poetic practices. 3.“Gawain and the Green Knight” represents a kind of heroic poem we call Medieval Romance. Use your knowledge of all the other stories (poems, etc.) we’ve read to show how it is that this tale of King Arthur’s court from the fourteenth century represents an extension of the heroic or epic literary mode into Christian Medieval Europe (the blending of Christian, Celtic, and Germanic cultures) and is at the same time a bridge between (or combination of) the epic and lyric traditions in European poetry. In other words, what literary features and attitudes of both epic and lyric poetry does “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” contain?

Published by
Ace My Homework
View all posts