HOW TO DO A WORKSHEET

For English 310 or 201

The idea of doing a worksheet is to show in shorthand how you would write a paper using primarily the technique of literary analysis (careful re-reading) assigned for a particular unit of the course. You need evidence of a certain kind and a thesis. As with a paper, you are expected to narrow the range of possibilities to an idea which is completely your own reading. For plot structure, then, you might give the entire plot outline or concentrate on one kind of action, such as gift-giving or battles. Such a worksheet makes for excellent class discussion when all the participants have already made up their minds in a particular way and have evidence to support their interpretations.

You can do this successfully by starting with an interpretation and then gathering (listing) the best evidence for the idea (see the Gawain worksheet below). Or you can start gathering evidence of a certain kind and then see what conclusion(s) that process would lead you to (see the Beowulf worksheet below).

first sample worksheet – starts with an interpretation and lists supporting evidence

A Call to Anglo-Saxon Valor

The Cultural Contexts in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Thesis:

SGGK is primarily an Anglo-Saxon poem where the poet from the rural Northwest Midlands is calling for a return to the valor of action exhibited by the Anglo-Saxon heroes of old. While the story matter is Celtic and refined through sources that are clearly French, the poet chooses features of Anglo-Saxon poetry to show that the hero still always has to be able to brave the elements and face up to death.

Celtic Elements:

The stories of King Arthur - Irish sources in the story of Cuchulain (intro)

The tale of beheading – fitts one and four

The marvels and the magic – the Green Knight puts his head back on (st. 20)

the castle emerging out of nowhere (st. 32-33)

the girdle (st. 74 and all of fitt 4)

The shape-shifting Morgan la Fay – instigator of the whole game

French Elements:

Courtly fashion throughout – attention to clothing, armament, decoration - passim

The rhyming and metrical pattern at the end of each stanza

The courtly love dialogue and questions of love – (the three temptations in fitt 3)

Anglo-Saxon Elements:

The descriptions of seasons (st. 22-23, 80)

The harsh winters and the wilderness (fitt 2 the travel, fitt 3 the hunting scenes,

and fitt 4 the green chapel

The alliterative long lines of each stanza, alliteration in the wheels even

The Anglo-Saxon alliterative formulaic phrases therefore throughout

The association of those phrases with the actions of the hero in the wild

The Christian Elements:

All three cultures by this time are Christian; therefore, the Christmas setting and symbolisms are very important, but shared in large part by all three.

second sample worksheet – gathers evidence, then forms a conclusion

The Character of the Monsters in Beowulf

Grendel:

His name means grinder, toothy monster (intro or class notes)

Forever joyless, seems to envy the joy of Heorot (line 88f)

Belongs to race of Cain – half human, half giant (100-115)

Kills thirty men = B’s strength of 30 in his grip (122)

Antagonist of Hrothgar and his empire at Heorot “until the greatest

house in the world stood empty” (145)

Threat to buildings, party, and individual lives

Dies by the grip of B, his arm is torn out and he limps back home (750f)

Grendel’s Mother:

Lives under the mere, an underworld hall, “swamp-thing from hell” (1518)

Race of Cain generator – succubus, stealing men’s seed,

as revealed in the phrase, “fatherless creatures” (1355)

Impervious to ordinary sword-thrusts (1523)

Great swimming warrior, elusive

Seeks revenge for the deadly wound to her son, kills Aeschere (1278f)

Unconscious/underground sexual threat to individuals

and genetic threat to the species

Dies by her own magical sword that B accidentally uses (1558f)

Dragon:

Hoards treasure, the consummate materialist, the sleeping dragon (2219)

Underworld empire, not at first antagonistic to B’s kingdom (2230f)

Breathes fire, flies overhead and torches his enemies (2312-23)

Strikes out of revenge for the violation/theft of his treasure (2280)

Kills the 70 year-old hero, “sharp fangs into his neck” (2690f)

Dies by the strokes of B and Wiglaf (2700f)

Conclusion:

The most formidable or dangerous monster of all is Grendel’s Mother. Grendel is a monster prologue, the Dragon a monster epilogue, but GM is the heart of the story. The story could easily end with the journey home to Geatland and the presentation of Hrothgar’s gifts to Higelac, with a brief reference at the end to the fifty winters of kingship and the magnificent burial befitting the hero. The dragon is, to me, anticlimactic. Grendel, on the other hand, is just the warm-up for the big fight under the mere. The main attraction and the most deadly force B ever encounters (and he does so completely alone) is GM and her threat of genetic engineering. Attaching GM to the story of Cain makes the story fit the Bible; but in a non-Christian tradition, she is just as much a threat since as long as she lives, there will be more monsters to match.

Nota Bene:

You only need to list all the evidence you would use and to indicate where i can find it (give line #, act, scene, or page and use quotations whenever they will be compelling arguments from the text). Your conclusion doesn’t have to be more than an introductory paragraph, but obviously a second paragraph might help show how the thesis fits with other important elements in the story or answer other opposing interpretations. For example, in the sample from SGGK, what about the pentangle, what culture is it from? In the Beowulf sample, how would you answer the Christian interpretations that make Beowulf a type of Christ fighting Satan?