Undergraduate Essays
American Satire and Humour
Chaucer
Contemporary Australian Literature
Eco-Texts
Medieval Arthurian Legends
The Modern Middle Ages
Reading Theory
The Romance
Shakespeare Into Film

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Essays

My Bachelor of Arts with Honours (English and CreativeWriting) was completed in 1997, at the University of Western Australia. The following essays are those written for second, third, and fourth year, in my English major. I give permission for students to quote from them, as they would from any other published material - with a full reference. However, it should be kept in mind that these are undergraduate essays, and so range in quality and accuracy.

For details on how to reference these essays see my Copyright page.

American Satire and Humour

• Thurber's Carnival
  Examines the creation of humour in Thurber's The Thurber Carnival.
  
• Black Humour and Cat's Cradle
  Explores the uses of black humour in Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle.

Chaucer

• 'True' Love or Not To Love?
  A look at Chaucer's use of Courtly Love conventions in Troilus and Creseyde.
  
• Laughing at the Carpenter
  A discussion on a passage of the Miller's Tale, in comparison to the Knight's Tale.
  There is an accompanying translation: The Miller's Tale: Translation of lines 3601-3642
• "I ne kan nat bulte it to the bren" A fruitful fruitless search for the One True Meaning in The Nun's Priest's Tale.
  Discussion of Chaucer's subversive use of the Beast Fable genre.

Contemporary Australian Literature

• "Who Does She Think She Is?" A Quest for Understanding in Tirra Lirra by the River.
  Examines the protagonist's search for self-awareness.
• "Is There a Price to Pay for Every Damn Thing?" The High Price of Freedom for Women in The Children's Bach and Joan Makes History.

Eco-Texts: Nature/Writing/Technology

• Lights, Cameras, Eco-Action! Self, Intertextuality, and Environment in Stark and The Bluebird Cafe.
  Discusses how the environment is used to define notions of self.
• Problems with "Lights, Cameras, Eco-Action!"
  A self-analysis of the flaws in my essay.
• Eyeballing the Simulacra - Desire and Vision in Blade Runner.
  Examines the extent that desire motivates the narrative of the film, with particular reference to the visual imagery. There is also an Annotated Bibliography of the texts I've referenced.

Medieval Arthurian Legends

• Medieval Courtly Love: Did Women Love Too?
  A discussion of Larry Benson's paper "Courtly Love and Chivalry in the Later Middle Ages".
  
• Preliminary Arthurian Bibliography
  A one page bibliography of Arthurian sources relating to Courtly Love and the status of Arthurian and medieval women.
  
• A Seat At The Round Table: Patriarchal Propaganda
  Discusses the place of women in medieval Arthurian legends.

The Modern Middle Ages

• A Plaguing Paradox: An Exploration of Meaning in The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey.
  An informal essay discussing The Navigator's themes and their correspondence to 'reality'.

• Prize Winning Essay
  Reverent Comic Subversion in The Hobbit
  A discussion of the use of humour in two of Tolkien's works which reference or re-interpret the medieval text of Beowulf.
  This essay won me a Tin Duck for Best Western Australian Non-Professional Writer in 1997, awarded at SwanCon Twenty3 (April 1998). The essay was published in Piffle And Other Trivia #26 (1997).

Reading Theory

• To Author or not to Author?
  Attempts to answer the question: "What is an author?"

• Prize Winning Essay
  Changing Communication Technology: Evolution or Revolution?
  This essay won the Hyundai 50th Anniversary Worldwide University and College Student Essay Contest.

The Romance

• Critical Discussion of "King Horn"
• The Magic of "Sir Orfeo"
  Looks at the political and sexual power relations in "Sir Orfeo".
  
• Looking at the Romance: the Romance of Looking
  How the action of 'looking' is used in Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott", and Haggard's She.

Shakespeare Into Film

• Throne of Blood: Is it Shakespeare?
  An informal essay discussing the problems of cross-cultural translations of Shakespeare.
• Daughters of Chaos: An Examination of the Women in King Lear and Ran.

Last Updated 2-Mar-2005.
Copyright © 2005 by Cathy Cupitt.

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