Heloise and Margery Kempe

Because this course does not require a separate paper, the essay exams are designed to give experience in critical reading, analysis and writing, as well as explore your knowledge of the material. Be sure to provide evidence for your points from the course readings. You must include the required number of direct quotations from course readings, properly footnoted. 10% of your grade will be based on writing and proof-reading (there are writing reminders and tips posted on WebCampus and on the take-home mid-term instructions). Due May 14 by 3pm in my mailbox but accepted earlier. Late exams will be graded down by 1/2 letter grade per day unless you have spoken with me and we have arranged an extension (only given if circumstances truly beyond your control prevented you from turning in the exam).

Write a 5-6 page essay (typed, double-spaced) on ONE of the following questions:
1. Heloise and Margery Kempe were two equally strong but quite different medieval women. Compare Heloise and Margery on the following topics (in any order):
a) their circumstances and lives
b) their attitudes toward religion
c) their attitudes toward sexuality
d) their attitudes toward marriage
e) their attitude toward male authority
f) their attempts to deal with the limited opportunities open to women in the Middle Ages.

In your essay, use four quotations from Heloise?s Letters and four quotations from Margery of Kempe?s Book.

2. Late medieval mysticism and peasant revolts in the late Middle Ages both reflected a society that had suffered natural and human disasters as well as observations of a Church that seemed to be more interested in wealth and power than the salvation of Christians. Using the examples of Margery?s Book, the writings of Angela of Foligna, and materials in Backman, Chazelle, and Anderson and on WebCampus, how could you see late medieval female mysticism as a personal reaction to the difficulties of late medieval life for women and the ideologies of Wycliffe and Wat Tyler and his fellow revolutionaries as a social and economic response to the injustices of late medieval society? (Be sure to consider Margery?s circumstances as an unenclosed lay married woman not directly supervised by male authority).

In your essay, use three quotations from Margery?s Book, one from Wycliffe?s writings in Anderson, two from the article on Wat Tyler in Chazelle, and one each from the two descriptions of the 1381 English Peasant?s War (one in Anderson, one on WebCampus).

3. Some scholars have argued that it was during the Middle Ages that Europe became a ?persecuting society.? What informal and formal measures were taken by authorities and people in general against various outsiders in the Middle Ages, including against Jews, lepers, unsupervised mystics such as Margery of Kempe, priest?s wives, witches, sexual deviants, and revolutionary peasants? In what ways did medieval cities sometimes modify this pattern of exclusion? Be sure to say something in your paper, evenif briefly, about each of the groups referred to above.

In your answer, use three quotations from Backman, three quotations from relevant chapters in Chazelle, two from Margery?s Book and two quotations from either materials on WebCampus or Anderson

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