1. All of the following are differences between Marie’s Lanval and Sir Launfal except:
A.) The problems that Sir Launfal faces are much more practical and solvable than the ones
faced by Marie’s Lanval.
B.) Dame Tryamour of Sir Launfal is more eager to reincorporate Launfal into the courtly world
than to have him to herself for erotic love, as the fairy mistress of Lanval wishes above all else.
C.). Sir Launfal is less concerned than Lanval with class differences.
D.) In Sir Launfal, Launfal never actually leaves the court, but keeps returning to play
tournaments with it, as opposed to Marie’s Lanval where he renounces it permanently and rides
off into fantasy land with the fairy queen.
2.) All of the following statements concerning Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are true except:
A.) Gawain can never be said to give into the lady’s amorous advances.
B.) Gawain fears having sex with the lady because then he will have to have sex with her
husband, under the rules of their game of exchanges.
C.) The Green Knight is described solely as a monstrous figure.
D.) All of the above are false.
3.) All of the following statements concerning The Franklin’s Tale are true except:
A.) By the end, the narrator (the Franklin) suggests that the magician was the most generous of
all the characters involved because he had the greatest claim to what was owed to him.
B.) Dorigen remains a powerful woman because even though she must submit to Arverigus and
Aurelius it is because of her own fidelity to her promise, not some arbitrary agreement between
men, as in wife-swapping.
C.) Parts of the poem are described as happening during the season of Christmas because it
symbolizes the change from Old Testament adherence to the letter of the law to New Testament
ideas of grace, mercy, and forgiveness.
D.) All of the above are true.
4.) All of the following statements concerning The Wife of Bath’s Tale are true except:
A.) The choice that the hag gives to the knight after the bedside sermon allows the knight to
make an easier decision than the parallel choice presented in the source text for the tale.
B.) Both the hag and the knight undergo a series of transformations at the tale’s end.
C.) The point of having so many women state all the different things that women desire is to
show the knight that women do in fact have desires of their own in the first place and are not the
instruments of men.
E.) All of the above are true.
5.) All of the following statements concerning Tristan are true except:
A.) Courtliness in Tristan is defined not by how well one succeeds with habits of the court, but
by how well one succeeds with habits of education or self-improvement.
B.) It could be argued that Tristan and Isolde fall in love through a long process of which the
love potion is only a metaphor.
C.) The tragedy of Mark could be said to be that he doesn’t want to know what he wants to
know.
D.) All of the above are true.
6.) All of the following statements concerning the Morte Darthur are true except:
A.) Gawain is forced to choose between the love he feels for his fellowship of knights and the
love he feels for his family.
B.) The Morte Darthur is an example of historicizing romance.
C.) Arthur’s love for Guinevere transcends the duty he feels toward his knights of the round
table.
D.) Though Guinevere sees her mistakes clearly, Lancelot never does quite figure out that and
how he has done wrong.
7.) Parataxis is most often used in the Morte Darthur to:
A.) Make it impossible to tell who is responsible for something happening.
B.) Symbolize Lancelot’s forbidden love for Guinevere.
C.) Create prose that rhymes.
D.) Show how past events foreshadow future ones.
8.) All of the following works were originally written in Middle English except:
A.) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
B.) The Canterbury Tales
C.) Morte Darthur
D.) All were originally written in English.
9.) Middle English romances are less concerned with courtly love and more concerned with
practical matters than the French romances of Chretien and Marie.
A. True
B. False
10.) All of the following statements about Middle English romances in general are true except:
A.) They are a relatively late phenomenon in medieval England (14th and 15th centuries).
B.) They are products of the courtly world.
C.) They usually reinforce the value systems of the gentry, the principal audience of the
romances.
D.) They present problems that can be solved, usually by money.
11.) Sir Launfal suggests that the ideal of knighthood might be a fiction of the past that is
currently in decline.
A. True
B. False
12.) Read the following passage from The Knight’s Tale and then select the answer(s) that best
describes its significance:
Then hold it wise, for so it seems to me,
To make a virtue of necessity,
Take in good part what we may not eschew,
Especially whatever things are due.
A.) This passage suggests that divine perspective on the world is different from our own
perspective.
B.) This passage suggests the underlying futility of the pagan world of The Knight’s Tale.
C.) This passage suggests that Theseus’s audience should make the best of bad situations even if
it seems impossible.
D.) Both B and C.
13.) All of the following statements on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are true except:
A.) The bedroom scene and test demonstrates the lady’s quick ability to sexualize a scene and
place herself in charge of it.
B.) In the bedroom scene and test, Gawain demonstrates his active role in a male-centered,
martial world.
C.) The bedroom scene/test sets up a scene of reversed expectations, a battle of the sexes, and a
battle of language between Gawain and the lady.
D.) All are true.