Topics for oral reports  . . . .Guidelines for oral reports

I've furnished some links to sites which may help you with a specific topic; otherwise, see me for print bibliography and editions. You should visit the Links page as well.


those topics with a are for undergraduates only

1. A bit of Pasolini's Canterbury Tales (film)

2. Any six ME lyrics other than what is on the syllabus

3. Any OE text other than what is on the syllabus

4. Any part of Piers Plowman B other than what is on the syllabus

5. Any part of anything else on the syllabus I

6. Any part of anything else on the syllabus II

7. Any three hagiographical legends from the Legenda Aurea (Golden Legends)

8. Architecture in the Middle Ages
Chapel of Cappella Pazzi, Church in Santa Croce, Florence
Digital Image Access Project: Notre-Dame Cathedral of Amiens
Images of Medieval Art and Architecture

9. Augustine's Confessions [week 5]

10. Bernard of Clairvaux, In Praise of the New Knighthood [week 7]

11. Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy [week 6]

12. Clothing in the Middle Ages
Footwear (really) in the Middle Ages

13. Cuisine in the Middle Ages
Sample Recipes
A Boke of Gode Cookery
Chaucerian Cookery
Medieval and Renaissance Brewing

14. Dante, La Vita Nuova [week 11]

15. De Miseria condicionis humane (The Misery of the Human Condition) Pope Innocent III (1195), ed.& trans. Robert E. Lewis [week 5]

16. Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria Nova [week 2]

17. Music in the Middle Ages
Medieval Music

18. Old English riddles, proverbs, and charms
A list of titles

19. Painting in the Middle Ages
Medieval Illuminations: A Selection
Images from Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts
art @ Harvard's Chaucer Page

20. Religion and Heresy in the Middle Ages [week 12]

21. Religious life in the Middle Ages: the Rule of St. Benedict, or the Anchoresses' Rule, etc. [week 11]

22. Sources of The Knight's Tale (see Bryan & Dempster, Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales) [week 6]

23. A selection from John of Trevisa's De proprietatibus rerum

24. Student's choice I [weeks 3, 4, 8, 9, 10]

25. Student's choice II [weeks 3, 4, 8, 9, 10]


Ph.D. students only
Teaching the Norton Anthology

It's August, a few weeks before you begin your first tenure-track job, and your Chair calls in a panic, and asks if you could pick up the first half of the British Lit survey as a favor to her, etc. You open the Norton Anthology, and . . .

For your second oral report, teach the class something out of the medieval section of the Anthology. You have twenty minutes--no more. Therefore, pick something manageable, no more than a page or so that you can xerox and give to us the week before. You might want to focus on two or three poems, or on a passage in a longer work, or on a part of a longer text on the syllabus we're not covering in class.

If you choose to teach an excerpt, make sure you furnish the other students in the class with the context they need. If you want to teach something more substantial, survey the class on whether they've read the text--everyone (I like to pretend) has read Beowulf, or several of the Canterbury Tales, or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and perhaps all the class needs is a short summary (written, so that you're not spending class time on it) to refresh the memory. You should connect your choice to what we have already read, or are reading, in class, to either a primary text or a secondary article, or to both. There's no need to generate bibliography or familiarize yourself overmuch with background material: while your first oral report is aimed at graduate students, this is ought to be directed at undergraduates, though you should be mindful of your real audience in our seminar.

I will be happy to advise on text/s and strategies.

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