For background on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, click here.

E-mail opportunity (2 extra-credit points): E-mail the discussion list created for this class with your response to any or all of the following questions (or comment significantly on what someone else has already said in the discussion):

By now, you've heard my rather eccentric take on the poem.  What do you think of my reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by the time you get to the end of the poem?  Pay special attention to Gawain's encounters with Lady Bercilak in the bedroom and to his meeting with the Green Knight at the Green Chapel.  At the end of the latter encounter, you're told the whole story about the Green Knight -- who he is, why he did what he did, and how he did it.  What do you think at that point?  Is the Green Knight a good guy or a bad guy?  How does Gawain feel?  Do you sympathize with Gawain?  What do you think the author of the poem was trying to tell us?

Margery Kempe was a rather unusual woman.  The Book of Margery Kempe is her autobiography as dictated to a priest who could write.  She was a mystic with rather odd notions of mysticism.  She was a married woman and mother who wore a virgin's clothes.  She claimed to see visions of God but groused about having to take care of her ill and dying husband.  She elicited intense hatred from many of the people around her and in some sense clearly represented a threat to society in those people's eyes -- despite her oft-repeated claims not to intend any threat.  She's a very intriguing individual.

E-mail opportunity (2 extra-credit points): Choose any chapter from The Book of Margery Kempe in the reading assignment for class.  E-mail the discussion list created for class with your answer to any or all of the following questions (or comment significantly on what someone else has already said in the discussion):

What is interesting about the chapter you've chosen?  Why did you choose it?  What does the chapter reveal about Margery Kempe? about medieval English culture?  Does the chapter fit the Middle Ages as you conceive of the period?  You've now read a good sampling of medieval works.  Is Margery Kempe typical or atypical of the Middle Ages as you perceive the period?  How is she different from or similar to the male writers we've been reading?  What do the differences and similarities tell us about medieval English culture?  Why do people react the way they do to her?  Is she a threat to medieval society in some way?