Hey everyone,
I was looking through some past papers for A2 and I realised that I would have to rack my brains very very hard in order to get three essays. Unlike Ayoush, I do not have romances and spiritual women up my sleeve. So I was thinking, we could use this post to list exam questions and say briefly how we would work around the question to fit our topic. For this, you need to go to "create new post", and then you will see a tab next to it called "edit posts", and you select this one. If this is too complicated, you could just add comments to this post.
I don't feel very good about A2 :(
xx Illusionary
k, found this question in the 2005 paper for A2:
‘L. P. Hartley’s statement that “The past is a foreign country : they do things differently there” would be truer if for do we read feel.’ How different from those of our own time do you find the feelings expressed or represented in the writing of this
period?
what would one do with that? one thing i could talk about is how the middle ages thought about their own past, and how differently we think of the middle ages as our past. also, the way in which ME used OE to create a shared national identity, in the same way in which ME texts esp Arthur was used in periods afterward to create a sense of national identity. Actually, i suppose one could use this question to talk about the romances, and
a) how they perceived the A-S past
b) how they were perceived by their contemporaries
c) how they were perceived in the early modern period, the 19th century and finally 21st century
6 comments:
And... i have attached labels to each of our topics-posts (A1,A2,A3), so if you click on the label saying "A2" at the bottom of a post, it will take you to all the posts on A2.
Im feeling rather clever now :)
Hey, I'm still not sure how to do this whole labelling/creating posts thing...sorry :(.
But just thought I'd say, these are my A2 'topics':
-- York cycle (possibly mentioning other mediaeval drama too...). Probably on something about the dramatic techniques, if such a question is available; if not, something about how Christian 'ideology' is translated onto stage....
-- Mystics! :) Either a question specifically on the mystics (unless it's women mystics, which I can't do...), or a question about parts of the mystical experience that I could somehow twist into an essay about mystics, e.g. affective piety, isolation/spiritual enlightenment as a solitary quest, spiritual experiences challenging mainstream Church-prescribed interpretations, etc.
-- Dunbar. Something about the literary 'self-consciousness'/ craft/shaping of his poems...
-- Gawain poet. Either something about how the Cotton Nero poems fit together, or something about the 'vision' (excuse vagueness) of the Gawain-poet...
Hope this is a start to our A2-exam-questions excursions...
You should indeed be feeling rather clever now Illusionary :).
yeah that helps...you're looking to see the possible ways in which to approach your ideal topics. but what i meant was rather something where we take a question, and see exactly how we can fit it to our topic.
I really don't understand what you want here... how do we do the labelling, and creating posts? sorry :(
ok, found this question in the 2005 paper for A2:
‘L. P. Hartley’s statement that “The past is a foreign country : they do things differently there” would be truer if for do we read feel.’ How different from those of our own time do you find the feelings expressed or represented in the writing of this
period?
what would one do with that? one thing i could talk about is how the middle ages thought about their own past, and how differently we think of the middle ages as our past. also, the way in which ME used OE to create a shared national identity, in the same way in which ME texts esp Arthur was used in periods afterward to create a sense of national identity. Actually, i suppose one could use this question to talk about the romances, and
a) how they perceived the A-S past
b) how they were perceived by their contemporaries
c) how they were perceived in the early modern period, the 19th century and finally 21st century
Okay, as for the question... I'll do things in a different way to you Lali, and this way we can see different approaches too :).
I don't know whether I could do this question because my thesis was all about emotions, and the philosophy of emotions, so if I removed that from the exam essay, it'd take a lot out of my answer I think, cos that would be the basis of my own argument...But if I did do it, I'd probably use either the mystics for this, or the Gawain-MS poems.
I'd talk about the idea of 'feelings' in the context of philosophy of emotions (I think people have argued that there is a difference between feelings/emotions, so some awareness of that I guess would be needed...but I would say, "for the purpose of this essay I will treat the two as interchangeable--sorry dear Mr. Examiner!"). Many philosophers tend to collapse emotions into a timeless mass, believing there is no difference between the emotions of the Middle Ages, and the emotions of now. My argument on the day (though I might not agree with myself in real life!) would be that 'emotions' is such a complex, varied concept (what IS an emotion/feeling? Some philosophers define just six or so emotions, others more...), that we cannot for a start, assume that there is one kind of emotional experience in one historical 'period' (acknowledging also of course that the idea of historical 'period' is a difficult one--what is L.P.Hartley's vague 'past'?). With this in mind: the emotional experience of the 'late Middle Ages' (and I'd give specific dates, maybe 1100--1500 or something) is a very complex issue, and there is no one expression/representation (to return to the terms of the question-- I'd also look at the differences of these terms...) of emotions in the literature of the period. So within the rich, multifaceted realm of human feeling/emotion as expressed in literature, some areas may correspond with the expression/representation we encounter in modern times, but others are very foreign to "us".
I'd use the following criteria to assess the situation/structure my essay:
1) Emotional experience as individual-centred.
2) Emotional experience as having physical attributes (many philosophers of emotion see the 'physicality' in emotional experience as very important-- feeling "hot" when you're angry/in love, heart racing when you feel 'fear' etc.)
3) The emotional and the spiritual as being bound
4) Emotional experience as being combined with the cognitive, or the intellectual
Okay, that's the rough idea... I don't know if it's all that good... There's so much more I'd want to do with this question, but in an exam one would need to control oneself! I'd need more time to polish it up ... hope it's all okay? Also looking over my answer, someone who wanted to be devil's advocate could say, 'ahhh... but there is already a big problem with your argument-- you're looking at modern theories of emotion... how can that apply to the mediaeval experience?'. And that's a very valid point... how did the people of the time see/write about emotions?
Anyway, I'm running out of steam!! :S Sorry for babbling....
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