Is Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt” unique enough to be considered an original poem? Does it plagiarize all or part of Petrarch’s Rime 190? Or does it attempt to translate Petrarch’s Rime 190 into English?
20 Comments
How are women and women's bodies portrayed in Wyatt's "Whoso List to Hunt"? One Petrarchan scholar wrote that Petrarch's poems were no more than "a great fiction to compensate for a real state of affairs in which it was a man's world and a violent one at that." Do you consider this fiction an adequate compensation? To what extent do you think this fiction served to alleviate or aggravate the real state of affairs? What attitudes toward women are implicit in the text? Provide at least one explicit example from the text as the basis of your argument. Be sure to provide sufficient commentary to make your point convincing.
Reread lines 131-134. Do you see Gawain's self-description as a sincere self-evaluation? Or as false modesty? Explain why.
Would you expect a contemporary heroes to describe themeselves in this way? Why or why not? Reread lines 37-45. How does the Green Knight appeal to Arthur's sense of honor?
Reflect on the wife's ideas and attitudes concerning women. Analyze how one of the wife's ideas or attitudes is similar to or different from contemporary feminist ideas and attitudes.
Review the old woman's arguments concerning gentility and gentleness, wealth and poverty. Select one point in her argument and explain why it is or is not relevant to our present social situation.
Review the various answers that the knight rejected (lines 101-124). Why do you think he rejected these but accepted the old woman's answer? Did the knight have some reason for believing that the old woman's answer would please the queen and other ladies?
Review Chaucer's description of the pardoner, pp. 162-163. How would you categorize the pardoner using the four humors?
Select one detail from the setting that the wife provides for her tale. Explain how that detail relates to the underlying conflict between men and women in this passage.
Discuss the techniques that Chaucer uses to indirectly characterize the wife in the General Prologue, pp. 56-57.
Identify and explain one interesting contrast between Beowulf and Krebs. What might be the significance of this difference? Make an argument for your opinion based on the text.
Patterns are an important motif in "Soldier's Home." Compare the first two paragraphs. These are about two photographs. What patterns can you find in Hemmingway's description of these two photographs? Give one specific example.
Compare "Soldier's Home" to other texts that you have read by women. What patterns do you recognize in how Hemmingway writes about and characterizes women?
Share your ideas from today's class. What do you think one of the monsters from Beowulf means in light of Cohen's first thesis?
Reflect on the boasts delivered by your classmates: What did your classmates do well?
The monster's body is a cultural body. What do you think Cohen means by this?
Share your reactions to the conclusion of the story: How do you feel about Beowulf's decision to face the dragon alone as an old man? Has his pride finally got the best of him? Or is something else going on here?
How does the poet develop one specific trait of the epic hero in the description of Beowulf's fight with Grendel?
What struck you as an important element of Tolkien's argument? What stood out to you? What did you agree or disagree with?
According to Harmon and Holman's A Handbook to Literature, caesura is "a pause or break in a line of verse" (74). In the translation of Beowulf included in the Holt McDougal Literature textbook, a caesura is often indicated by a comma. In the original translation, a caesura would have appeared in the middle of each line.
Identify one caesura in the text of Beowulf from pages 42-49. Breifly describe the effect of this pause in the line. How does it relate to the meaning of the line itself? |
Shrubber |
|