"Wink Of An Eye"

You would be confused as well.

These are the essay topics, in their original text for my english test today.

Respond to two of the quesitons below. Read them all with care, expecting that you will not know the answer right away. (that's because the answer doesn't exist yet.)

The high-quality essay will take a reasonable, supportable position on the questions issue, and it will contain plenty of evidence drawn from the literature we've studied. It will also be largely free of error and observe the usual conventions of academic writing in the humanities. If you borrow from a source other than the literature itself, cite it informally, like this: "As the Encyclopdia Britannica article called "Beowulf" points out,...". Fifty points per essay possible.

1. Consider "Dream of the Rood" as devotional literature that often employs secular figurative devices--metaphors drawn from nonreligious realms of human experience, for one example. Develop as essay that includes precise examples of both the devotional theme and the secular literary techniques.

2. We Know theres a danger in reading older heroic literature as if it works the way an archaeological excavation does. Beowulf is a collectionof legends, transmitted orally for scores of years before the single written copy that exists was made. All the sane, it is possible yo say that we know the Anglo-Saxon times better after reading Beowulf, so long as we are careful about what we mean by "know better".

What do you think Beowulf is reliable evidence of, in historical or anthropological terms? Don't just distinguish the plausible from the fanciful; I don't need to be told that there were probably no dragons in England in the 800's. Begin with this assumption: the poem's audience was eager to find itself in the poem, and the poet was eager to be well received by his audience. Generalize responsibly about the society depicted in the poem- what were its assumptions about itself and others, what did it value and what did it despise, what are its beliefs about living honorably and dishonorably?

3. Or do the same thing for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

4. Or if youre more interested in art than history, construct an essay that identifies the poetic qualities of Sir gawain. Consider the way the poem would sound when read aloud.-patterns of sound and structure-and look also at matters of meaning-plot, characterization, and especially theme.

so yeah, I know I failed that one.

~OZ