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Essay Instructions: A well organized, carefully composed essay.
1 Discuss Scott's perception of the life of a Jew living in 12th century England. Include all the following perspectives:
A. What does the narrator tell us about the Jews? What, ifd any, bias does he exhibit?
B.What do the Jews themselves feel about their situation?
c.How do vaious Gentiles in the novel perceive Jews (e.g. Gurth, Ivanhoe, Locksley, Bois-Guilbert,Beaumanoir)? In what ways if any, do ;their perceptions change and why?
This should all come out of the novel Ivanhoe. No secondary sources. Use specific examples and quote where appropriate.
Must be 4-6 pages, typed, double spaced (quotations not included)
Due Friday Dec. 17th.

Essay Instructions: Medievalism and the Arthurian Revival in 19th Century
Thesis Proposal


I. Working Title:
?Someone must have had a bad experience with a priest: a comparison of the Catholicism aspects in Scott?s Ivanhoe and Twain?s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur?s Court?

II. Thesis:
In reading Mark Twain?s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur?s Court, one cannot deny that the blame for the collapse of Hank?s new civilization falls on the Church. Throughout the novel, Twain paints a negative image of the church and its priests. This negative image can also be found in Sir Walter Scott?s Ivanhoe. Scott gives us characters such as the confused Templar and the misaligned Prior. Both writers have poor views of religion and this is evident in their unflattering portraits of a corrupt medieval church.
Scott''s portrait of the Prior is not a pleasant one. Nothing about him seems spiritual. When we first meet him, his costume is basically appropriate for a priest, but it is said to be ?composed of materials much finer than those which the rule of that order admitted?(Scott 38) and as having ?his countenance fully displayed, and its expression was calculated to impress a degree of awe, if not of fear, upon strangers? (Scott, 39). Scott has already begun to use the Prior to paint a picture of what is wrong with religion in the Middle Ages. This commentary on religions continues in the Prior?s interaction with the Normans he aligns himself with, and this brings us to another character with a less than pure spiritual pursuit: Brian de Bois-Guilbert.
Bois-Guilbert is an arrogant Knight Templar, who is ?specifically stated to be false in his oaths, faithless to women, hypocritical in his religion. He is unwilling to fulfill his feudal responsibilities to the weak and oppressed and thinks only of his own freedom and ambition?(Chandler 35). He proves himself a good knight in battle, yet lacks the morals one would contribute to a Knight Templar. It is in his lust for Rebecca that he goes against his oath and against the church. Brian becomes the representation of evil and this evil is attached to the church.
Likewise, this theme of the church being the bad guy is found in Connecticut Yankee. Throughout the novel the Church is the greatest enemy of Hank and all of his projects. Twain makes the church the downfall of Hank?s new civilization in the end as the priest plot against him and scare their parishioners back into their original mindset, back to being good God fearing people. It is because of the church that so many die in the final battle.
This theme can also be seen in the letters and criticisms that follow the novel and in the illustrations throughout. He asked Hall in a letter to ?be careful not to get any of the religious matter in? the sales promotions, and told another to avoid mentioning any of the novels ?slurs at the church?. A hostile critic in Boston was one of the few critics to state how much Twain?s view of the church as ?an established slave-pen? upsets him, being a religious man himself.
This thesis will compare these two works and examine what was the source of these two writers anti-religion feelings. The thesis will speculate that even though these writers are from different period, they have the same view of religion in both their time period and that of the Arthurian legend. I am wondering if any of their other works will share this theme, or if it was their opinion that it was part of the legend? Was it Scott that led to the theme in Twain?s novel, or was it Twain speaking for himself? What was it that made these two men want to make the Church look so bad? And was Twain thinking about revising his attitude? This thesis will attempt to get into the heads of these authors, and will examine where the anti-church attitude came from and why it was put into their novels.

III. Secondary Sources:
Before writing this thesis, I will have to review many other sources including but not limited to Scott?s Rob Roy and Twain?s Life on the Mississippi. I will also track down as many criticisms relating to these authors, both recent criticisms and criticisms from the authors contemporaries. I will also need to consider biographical sources on the authors to see if events in their lives lead to my theme.


IV. Works Cited:

Chandler, Alice. ?A Dream of Order.? Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press

Clemens, Samuel Langhorne. ?A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur?s Court? New York: W.W. Norton and Company (1982)

Scott, Sir Walter. ?Ivanhoe? New York: Penguin Books (1962)

Essay Instructions: I want you to respond to this question in a professional essay form of five pages long.

Discuss the continuing necessity by critics of addressing gender in the interpretation of authors and the reception of nineteenth-century texts. What constraints and/or freedoms did writers experience based on their gender and how are they productive to our reading of their work?

In your answer draw upon at least 3 authors from the theory list I will refer to now and 3 or 4 different literary texts.

Fiction( Literary Texts)
Fiction
1. Austen, Jane. Emma. Northanger Abbey. 1803.
2. ---. Pride and Prejudice. 1813.
3. Braddon, Mary Elizabeth, Aurora Floyd. 1863.
4. ---. Lady Audley's Secret. 1863.
5. Brontë, Anne. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. 1848.
6. Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. 1847.
7. ---. Shirley. 1849.
8. ---. Villette. 1853.
9. Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. 1847.
10. Butler, Samuel. The Way of All Flesh. (Written between 1873 ??" 1884) & (Published in 1903).
11. Coleridge, Mary Elizabeth. The King with Two Faces. 1897.
12. Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. 1860.
13. ---. The Moonstone. 1868.
14. Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. 1850.
15. ---. Hard Times. 1854.
16. ---. Great Expectations. 1861.
17. Eliot, George. Adam Bede. 1859.
18. ---. The Mill on the Floss. 1860.
19. ---. Middlemarch. 1874.
20. Gaskell, Elizabeth. Mary Barton. 1848.
21. ---. Ruth. 1853.
22. ---. Sylvia's Lovers. 1863.
23. Hardy, Thomas. The Return of the Native. 1878.
24. ---. The Trumpet ??" Major. 1880.
25. ---. Jude the Obscure. 1895.
26. ---. Tess.1891
27. James, Henry. Portrait of the Lady. 1881.
28. ---. The Turn of the Screw. 1898.
29. Meredith, George. Diana of the Crossways. 1885.
30. Scott, Sir Walter. Waverly. 1814.
31. ---. Ivanhoe. 1819.
32. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818.
33. Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1897.
34. Thackeray, William Makepeace. Vanity Fair. 1848.
35. ---. The Rose and the Ring. 1854.
36. Trollope, Anthony. Can you Forgive Her? 1865.
37. ---. Ayala's Angel. 1878.
38. Wilde, Oscar. The Canterville Ghost. 1887.
39. ---. The Picture of Dorian Gray. 1891.
40. Wood, Ellen. East Lynne. 1861.

Theory
1. Basch, Francoise. Relative Creatures: Victorian Women in Society and the Novel.
2. de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex.
3. Beer, Patricia. Reader, I Married Him: A Study of the Women Characters of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot.
4. Branca, Patricia. Silent Sisterhood. Middle Class Women in the Victorian Home.
5. Burstyn, Joan. Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood.
6. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
7. Cavallaro, Dana. French Feminist Theory: An Introduction.
8. Coward, Rosalind. "Are Women's Novels Feminist Novels." The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory.
9. Gagnier, Regenia. Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain, 1832-1920.
10. Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth ??" Century Literary Imagination.
11. Gorsky, Susan. "The Gentle Doubters: Images of Women in English Women's Novels, 1840 ??" 1920." Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist Perspectives.
12. Harding, Sandra. The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies.
13. Jenkins, Ruth. Reclaiming Myths of Power: Women Writers and the Victorian Spiritual Crisis.
14. Kolodny, Annette. "Dancing Through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism." The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory.
15. Mills, Sara. Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women's Travel Writing and Colonialism.
16. Moses, Claire and Claire Goldberg. French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century.
17. Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing.
18. Foster, Shirley. Victorian Women's Fiction: Marriage, Freedom and the Individual.
19. Hoagwood, Terence Allan and Kathryn Ledbetter. "Colour'd Shadows": Contexts in Publishing, Printing, and Reading Nineteenth ??" Century British Women Writers.
20. Houghton, Walter. The Victorian Frame of Mind.
21. Shanley, Mary Lyndon. Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England.
22. Thompson, Nicola Diane. Victorian Writers and the Woman Questions.

From this long list of Theory, I would like you to refer to De Beauvoir, Butlet, and Sandra and Gubar. You can refer to one more . As far as the literary texts list is concerned, I would like you to refer the Bronte sisters novels ( refering to their writings in general and a particular one novel or two in depth) and refer of course to other novels( written by female authors) from the list I provided.