Representation of the medieval in fiction, poetry and non-fiction are common in this century. They often tell you more about the writers’ literary characteristics and their social and political concerns than they do about the past the re-present. Write an essay in which you discuss the uses of the medieval in poetry by Keats (“La Belle Dame Sans Merci” and “The Eve of St. Agnes”) and Tennyson (“The Lady of Shalott” and “Idylls of the King”) and in the prose writing of Carlyle (Past and Present) and Ruskin (The Stones of Venice.)


