British Literary History

I turned in my two papers today. Whew. Studying for finals will be a lot less stressful than writing those papers.

The problem I had with the 2150 paper--namely not knowing when I was comparing Krapp to a character or a writer--I solved by simply not comparing him to other characters. I think my paper for that class is adequate. I feel pretty good about my grade in that class before studying for the final, so hopefully I'll get an A.

The paper I wrote for 2140 was fantastic, even though I didn't like that class as much. I said I might post it, but I'm a little nervous about doing that with my essay, first because it's six pages long, and second because there are some stupid people out there who think they can coast through life by stealing smarter people's intellectual hard work. I don't want to risk that happening to my paper, and I don't want to bother with copyrighting it, so I'll just give you some of my main arguments.

Basically, the Wife of Bath uses elements of the romance genre to put and keep women in power. The first woman in the tale is the maid whom the knight rapes; while she has no power over him, this relationship with women established by his crime is reversed through the story as he meets and obeys various women of power. The first of woman of power in the tale is the queen, who gains power over the knight due to Arthur's chivalry and with the classic quest. Next is the hag, who gains power over the knight because she's linked to magic, twists the damsel-in-distress element of romance, and uses the spiritual quest element to build herself up as a Christ-figure. It's a sweet paper.

Hopefully in the next two weeks I'll find out how well I did on those papers. I'll let you know.