Review the topics for the Final Paper, which is located in Week 5. Choose a topic of interest and search for secondary resources online. Choose two of the search results you think are appropriate for the Final and two you think would be inappropriate. Provide links to all four of the sources, labeling each as appropriate or inappropriate. Also, provide a brief explanation of your opinion of the resources’ academic value.
Your initial post should be at least 250 words in length. Support your claims with examples from required material(s) and/or other scholarly resources, and properly cite any references. Respond to at least two of your classmates’ posts by Day 7.
Some possible topics:
- Beowulf: How do elements of religion/spirituality in Beowulf connect to political and philosophical systems of the Middle Ages?
- “The Wife of Bath”: How does the Wife’s behavior (as well as those of the characters in her “Tale”) reflect and/or reject common ideas and practices of Chaucer’s era?
- Paradise Lost: What can we learn from Satan, Adam and Eve, the angels, and God about the way Milton viewed the human condition and 17th century British society?
- Renaissance Love Poetry (Sidney, Spencer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, etc.) : What do the Renaissance poets teach us about the major issues of the day such as the status of women?
- A Modest Proposal: What does Swift teach readers about the relationship between the impoverished Irish Catholics and their wealthy British landlords?
- The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself: How does Equiano use his own experiences to shed light on the British slave trade as well as society in the late 18th century?
