The Middle Ages (and a little bit of the Renaissance)

Choose one of the topics below. Whichever you choose, you will develop your paper (at least four full pages in standard MLA format); be sure to include concrete, specific examples.

Have fun!

  1. Dante seems to have left a circle (or at least a bolge) out of his Inferno. Write the missing canto (you do not have to write this in terza rima). First decide what crime/sin will be punished; next determine the fitting punishment; place offencers in the appropriate section (upper or lower hell--the greater the sin, the nearer they will be to the center of hell). Describe the seting, the torments, Dante and Virgil's reactions; you may even wish to have one or two historical representatives of the group address Dante to tell him their stories. NOTE: this may be humorous.

  2. This is similar to 1), except in this version you are to take one or more historical figures who lived after Dante wrote Inferno and situate them in one of the existing circles of Dante's hell based on Dante's system of sins and punishments. Dante has already given you the setting description, but you'll probably want to add a little more place detail; also, your new characters may receive specialized punishment in their circle. Have Dante and Virgil address one or more of the figures.

  3. Love it or hate it, Machiavelli's The Prince has influenced much of the thinking of leaders and entire governments since it was written in the Renaissance. You will want to read portions of the work, which can be found here at Project Gutenberg (and elsewhere): The Prince .

    Read sectons XV - XXI; these discuss many of The Princely Virtues. Then compare this idea of leadership to any of the other leaders we have read about this semester.

  4. Choose a work from the Middle Ages or the early Renaissance that is not on our reading list (you may select works from the text or outside the text, but if you find a work outside the text, please include a Works Cited page). Discuss characteristics of literature from the period you are discussing and locate examples of these characteristics in the work you've selected. For example, Renaissance literature deals with characters on a more human scale than works from earlier periods; also, there are elements of science and discovery beginning to replace some religious elements in the writing (and other arts).

    Tip: for more information on what some of these characteristics are, I recommend you read the introductory material on the period in your textbook.

    Second tip: as always, do not feel bound to the Western cannon. There are some excellent works appearing during these ages around the world, and some of them are very interesting (and even unusual); much of the material is also available online. I mentioned earlier that Japan's Tale of the Heike fits this period, but so does a very odd Japanese fairy tale called "Taketori Monogatari ("The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter") which was reproduced (in translation) by Project Gutenberg here: "The Bamboo-Cutter and the Moon-Child"; this porquoi tale, from a collection of fairy tales, could easily be looked at for its structure, for the values it showcases, its similarity to earlier tales we've looked at earlier in the semester, even as an early example of science fiction (though that may be a stretch).

For some tips on writing about literature, go to

[writing about literature]

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