Example English dissertation topic 7:

An analysis of the roles of nature and blindness in Shakespeare’s King Lear and Chaucer’s The Merchant’s Tale

Linking these two classic works of respectively, Tudor and late middle age English literature are the themes of nature and blindness. Within Lear, themes abound including those of a King who is curiously naive in the ways of human nature, a King who finds himself in a world of negated values, and a King faced with moral blindness and unnaturalness. Such concerns are mirrored by issues of blind love, a more general inability to see reality and the cunning of womanhood in in Chaucer’s The Merchant’s tale.  Using a range of secondary sources this dissertation compares and contrasts the use of blindness and nature as a metaphor in both works.

Suggested initial topic reading:

• Chaucer, G. ([2005]). The Canterbury Tales (New Ed edn). London: Penguin.
• Edwards, A.S.G. (1990) ‘The Merchant’s Tale and moral Chaucer’, Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. 51(3), pp. 409-426
• Shakespeare, W. ([1994]) King Lear (New Ed edn). Ware: Wordsworth Edition Classics.
• Stewart, D.J. (1977) ‘Pornography, obscenity, and capitalism’, The Antioch Review, Vol. 35(4), pp. 389-398.