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Arthurian Romances: Chretien De Troyes Idea 1: Women in Romances Masculinity and femininity were set-in-stone standards of society during this time period and played a large overall role in De Troyes works. The typical “damsel in distress” archetype that we all know and love today dominated the literary world during the first baby steps of this genre. The protection and courting of these types of women drives the majority, if not the entirety, of Arthurian romances. As in “The Knight of the…

The Mighty Corn It is fascinating to understand how a tiny seed enabled our ancestors to build massive empires and sustain themselves for thousands of years. Going back to the indigenous people during the pre-Columbian era, all the way down to the conquest of Cortez, it is clear to see how corn made possible the development of societies, cultures, and beliefs. Even today, the domestication of corn plays a major role in the way our society operates, especially in the latino communities. People…

Margaret’s influence on Arthuriana appears in multiple disciplines for the direct similarity between her reign and Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur. Stephen Knight and Merry Wiesner-Hanks’ Arthurian Literature and Society depicts the key similarities. Lancelot and his party represent the Yorkists, Henry VI played Arthur, and Guinevere, locked in a tower, represents Margaret as she defended herself from outside attack and dealt with her actual imprisonment. As the fifteenth century came…

The Aztecs, as they are known, were a group of people who originated as a nomadic tribe in northern Mexico. Although the origins of the Aztecs are uncertain, they "are believed to begun as a northern tribe of hunter-gatherers whose name came from that of their homeland, Aztlan (“White Land”)." The Aztecs were also known as the Tenochca derived from their capital city, Tenochtitlan, and the Mexica. The Aztec empire was built in 1428 under leader Itzcoatl, forming a three-way alliance with the…

Hernan Cortes was a Spanish conquistador and explorer that traveled from Spain to the New World when he was only 19. In the New World, he commanded just 600 soldiers and was able to conquer the Aztec empire who commanded tens of thousands of men. He was able to perform this astonishing feat by using strategy, ruthlessness, cunning, and an extreme amount of luck. After his conquest in the New World, Cortes became the governor of New Spain. After seven years of being the governor he was appointed…

In Song of the Hummingbird, the book describes the story of an indigenous woman named Huitzitzilin who explains her story to a Spanish monk. The Spanish monk finds her story to be fascinating because it is not what he was taught back in Spain. He sympathizes with her and begins to see the conquest through her perspective. She details the events that her people endured at the hands of Cortes and his Spanish conquerors. The text is organized by chapters as Huitzitzilin reiterates her story to…

“Greed in the end fails even the greedy,” says Cathryn Louis. Kino was very greedy about the pearl which lead to everything he loved to fall apart.In the folktale, “The Pearl,” by John Steinbeck there is a lot of materialism and greed will lead to immoral behavior. In the folktale, the protagonist, Kino, finds a pearl to help his family to try to get out of poverty. In the end, the characters in the story have so much greed that it completely destroys the family. Steinbeck uses the pearl a sa…

The Columbian Exchange was a time period in which trading and exchanges were completed between the Old and New Worlds. The man in which it was centered around is Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer and navigator, who is credited with discovering the New World. Although he was looking for a quicker trade route to Asia, Columbus stumbled upon North America and changed the way people lived all around the globe. Exploration was a crucial piece of European life, so its not surprising that the…

One day the poor fisherman.Kino,finds “the pearl of the world,perfect as the moon”(steinbeck 10). To be precise, In the novella The Pearl by steinbeck, Kino is a very poor man that does not have money. Juana his wife and coyotito his son all live in a brush house in La Paz on the Gulf of Mexico.Kino decides to go pearl diving to find a pearl to help coyotito because he got stung by a scorpion. Therefore,When kino finds the pearl of the world it brings him great fortune and also great evil to his…

When the Columbus and the Spanish started to arrive to the new world, many myths of what happened during those times of conquest were made. Myths do not have to only be made up stories but could also be stories that hold some truth to them. Conquistadors Francisco Pizarro and Hernan Cortez and explores Christopher Columbus both came to believe they were perceived as gods by Natives. Many of this conclusions were made up by miscommunication and also self-benefits, mainly for titles and riches. In…