Authurian Literature
I took this class purely for my own enjoyment, but it also gave me more practice with both organizing my content, and conducting thorough research. Since these are both useful skills in Web Design, it was a nice way to do double duty, so to speak.
Our instructor, Dr. Shrieves, provided us weekly reading assignments, as well as a complimentary historical video which reviewed the readings and gave extra context. We read several works in the Authurian tradition, and were given access to online academic libraries to help with our research papers.
Short Essay
We were asked to write an essay that presented an argument from any of the debates happening on the class forums at that point of the class. I decided to take a contrary position on the role of Guinevre in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", stating that she should actually be considered one of the villians, instead of a sympathetic character.
"...Guinevere was motivated by a desire to turn her husband against his sister, so that Morgan could not speak out about Guinevere’s own affair with Lancelot."
Final Paper Proposal
Before we were to run wild with our Final Project, we were asked to explore our ideas for topics a little and present what research we could find so far. We were also asked to think about if we wanted to ultimately write a paper, or do a video essay. At first, I was planning to do the video essay, but ended up going with the paper, due to just not having a very good webcam at that point!
"...I was struck by Guinevere’s disdain for Morgan in “The Mantle”, for the reason that Morgan was not fey, but practiced fey ways."
Final Project
The Final Project was a longer paper, up to 8 pages in length and thoroughly researched, that allowed us to choose a focused area of the Authurian tradition and explore it more fully. I decided to go with a further examination of Morgana Le Fay's different portrayals throughout the entire Authorian tradition. I wanted to explore the changing ways in which she was depicted, by different writers and creators.
"...If myths are what comes out of the game of telephone we play with facts over time, then is it possible that a historical and real Morgan existed, who held knowledge of medicine and early methods of flight?"