- Heroism: Often times in Middle Ages literature, characters are motivated by a prevailing sense of duty or honor. Sometimes the heroes are looking to test their own skill or lay waste to forces of evil. These acts of heroism have affected literary and cultural tradition so thoroughly that many modern ideas of heroism are directly derived from them.
- The essay should be 600-900 words in length.
- You must have a correctly formatted, original title that indicates what your essay is about. Do not put the entire essay title in quotation marks. Do not use only the titles of the stories you are using as the title of your essay.
- While it is fine (and even recommended) that you include the titles of the stories in the title of your paper, your title should be creative and original.
- Do not include a separate cover page.
- Your essay must be at least five paragraphs long (typed, double-spaced). More body paragraphs are allowable if needed but stay close to the word count window.
- Use MLA formatting for all parts of essay, including research documentation, using 8th edition MLA guidelines.
- You must include an MLA-style Works Cited page.
- Include a well-developed introduction paragraph that contains an arguable thesis statement.
Source and Citation Requirements
- Use at least 3 primary sources for your essay, unless otherwise notted in your prompt.
- Include at least 2 secondary sources.
- Secondary sources should be scholarly, analytical articles. Sources such as Wikipedia, Sparknotes, etc. are not acceptable.
- For secondary sources, the best place is usually AVL or Google Scholar.
- Remember that you are using your sources to back up your own original argument. Look to your sources to help you prove your points, not to provide your thesis.
Compare the heroes of any two texts, with focus on anything from tragic flaws to heroic journey to characterization, etc.
(Possible stories to use include the following: Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,