The following was originally submitted as a homework assignment:
Forum 3: For credit, post a response (of approximately 200 words) to one of the topics below and to at least two other classmates of 100 words.
1.
Does Mallory treat Arthur or Lancelot as the hero of the Arthurian legends? Back up your opinion with specific references to the text.
2.
Margery Kempe was an actual person; she is not a literary character. How does this fact impact the way in which you read her work?
For my response, I chose to speak on the Kempe subject.
Having the knowledge that Kempe was an actual person has little to no effect to how I read her work. Reading Kempe would be much like reading a personal journal or blog and even the tweets or posting to facebook walls of today. Though there may be some slight change, as I might be able to forge some sort of personal connection with the subject, the differences end there. Still, that difference isn't that strong. Any story, if well-written, should be able to draw the reader into the tale and create a bond; otherwise the text being read is no better than an instructional manual.
Furthermore, for those of us who may have faith in a higher being, we reads text which is claimed to have been written of or by real people or entities. There is no physical proof to back these claims; yet we believe them and connect with them wholeheartedly. Are our views changed by having heard others claim that these words may be false? If our views are affected by these claims, the change is typically minute and causes a strengthening of our connection to the verses we hold so dear.
I would want to question what would happen if we discovered--with hard certainty--that Kempe was a character of one's imagination after having believed that she was real for so long. I would then ask would this cause as great of an impact as discovering that whatever deity we choose to follow was the creation of someone's dream.
Tags: #American Public University, #APUS, #college, #LITR210, #school
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