Medieval literature - Topics

Was Dante writing theology or poetry in the Divine Comedy? Why did troubadours sing about knights who never won anything? Is Beowulf really about a hero or about a failing king? Did women ever hold real power in the chivalric world or only inspire it? Why were medieval romances read aloud instead of silently? Why do so many medieval dream visions begin in a walled garden? Why did knights wear their lady's favour into a tournament? Why does Beowulf survive in only one manuscript? What does Gawain's flinch in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight actually mean? Who exactly was Chaucer mocking in the Wife of Bath? How much of Dante's Inferno is political score-settling? How did Margery Kempe get away with dictating her own book? Was courtly love ever meant to be taken literally? How rude was the Miller's Tale to a medieval audience? How did the romances of King Arthur shape how real knights were expected to behave? Was troubadour love song really all about adultery? Did medieval authors worry about plagiarism when retelling Arthur? Who decided which Arthurian stories were the canonical ones? Why did monastic scriptoria keep copying pagan authors like Virgil? Did chivalric romance change how real knights behaved? How did monasteries end up preserving books nobody else wanted? What did a medieval scribe do when he disagreed with the text he was copying?