DIRECTIONS: CHOOSE ONLY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING PROMPTS  AND WRITE AN MLA ESSAY  OF 1250-1500 WORDS, USING AT LEAST TWO SECONDARY SOURCES.

PROMPT ONE: Compare and contrast Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and/or the knight’s Arcite and Palomon in Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale with regard to some/all of the following  a) the hero’s journey or quest b) religion and mysticism c) literary structure and d) time period and cultural values. You must use at least two secondary sources to support your arguments about the text. Your paper should conform to MLA style and exhibit the characteristics of a good literary argument. This means that your paper should have a clear overarching argument or thesis that controls the structure and organization of the rest of the paper. Please type and double-space your paper in Times New Roman 12pt font and format it with one inch margins. Your paper should be 3-4 pages in length, not including the works cited page. Further resources are available in this content folder and the week 6 content folder to help you. 

PROMPT TWO: One of the purposes of this course is to survey the development of the literary canon (the entire body or collection of written texts that scholars and the general public recognize as a nation’s literature) of the English nation. Write a paper in which you discuss/explain/argue how Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Chaucer’s Tales (you may focus on one tale in particular or discuss them as a whole) represent milestones in the development of English literature and are both similar and different in subject matter, themes, audiences, levels of sophistication, development of language etc.