Write about each of the three major works: Beowulf, Gawain, and The Canterbury Tales–in roughly equal measure.
There’s an intense focus on material wealth, the status it accords, and various types of material exchange in the works we’ve read thus far. In a detailed, thoughtful essay supported by textual examples, discuss how material objects are represented, the degree to which they are valued, what kinds of cultural meanings they carry, and how they affect human and social relationships in Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and either The Miller’s Tale/Prologue or The Wife of Bath’s Tale/Prologue. Does the importance of material exchange and status transform over the course of the works we have studied? What conclusions do you think each of the works arrive at concerning materialism, greed, or perhaps the possibility of upward mobility through various kinds of exchange?