Paper #2 Due for Professor Wright:  (5-7 pages)

You may choose your own topic in consultation with me but here are some suggestions and questions to help you generate ideas:

1. Taking as your point of departure the three major frame tale collections that we have read and discussed in class, Count Lucanor, the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales, how does each author reveal his attitude toward one of the following issues (choose only one): a) the creation of the other; b) the marginalization/and or portrayal of minorities (Jews and Muslims); c) women; d) the formation of a European identity (social and religious)? What literary and narrative strategies does each employ in order to critique and/or uphold their point of view? Please feel free to include other literary or historical works from the course including Dr. Coolidge's materials that also touch on these issues.

2. One theme that unites many of the literary works we have read treats the emergence of an individual over and against the forces of an oftentimes antagonistic culture (Lazarillo lends itself well to this topic). How does this process play out in the work(s) of your choosing? For example, how does Margery Kempe or Leonor López de Córdoba (or fictional women such as the Wife of Bath) confront their respective societies given the limitations placed on them as women? How do they negotiate the powerful religious discourses of their time? What type of voice do they communicate to the readers and rhetorical strategies do they employ in their texts? How do they differ according to their respective cultures?

3. Another point of departure might be the relationship of Moorish and Arabic love poetry to European poetry, including the treatises on love by Andreas Capellanus and Ibn Hazm: Tawq al-Hammah (The Dove's Necklace). Or you might decide to explore the theme of love in other works we have read such as in the Celestina. What kinds of attitudes toward love are expressed in this work? How?

Paper due: Tuesday, November 3