Assessments.
Students should read carefully the formal requirements as set out by the Department in the Assessment and Submission webpages.
You can also consult the deadline map.
This module is a Second Year Early Modern Option (30 CATS)
- 1 x 1500 word Essay (10%): You can base your essay on one of the seminar questions. You can change the questions slightly to make them more focused (for example: 'Did the benefits outweigh the disadvantages of urban life in fourteenth-century England?'). Alternatively, you can formulate your own question, but please check with your seminar tutor if you are intending to do this.
- 1 x 3000 word Essay (40%): Same as above, but it might be a good idea to choose a broader question and to make more use of primary sources as this is going to be a longer essay.
- 1 x 3000 word Essay (or equivalent) (40%): you have two options, please read the information below carefully.
Option 1: 3000-word essay, on one of the topics we have covered, with a full bibliography and footnotes, exactly like the previous assignment.
Option 2: Write a 3000-word fictional account of a day in the life of a medieval person, based on one of the primary source extracts we have covered in class (for example, a heretic, Margaret Paston, a Southampton guild member…). Your person can be fictional, in which case you can invent a name for them, but they can also be real. The account needs to provide credible detail on the person’s context (what they are wearing, what they eat, their encounters with others and so on).
Marking Criteria: Although this is a creative assignment, the same marking criteria will apply. Please pay attention to the following:
Close reading of primary sources: You need to show us that you have used your main primary source effectively, utilising all the detail it gives you. You can use more than one primary source, where relevant.
Context and detail: You need to demonstrate that you have researched the background of the person you are writing about. You need to include a bibliography as you would when writing a normal essay, citing all the secondary sources you have consulted. You also need to use footnotes when providing specific information. For example, if you are writing about a person living through the Black Death in Florence, we need to see that you have actually read secondary sources on Florentine history. You can write in the first or third person. We are not going to be marking the style of the essay, but how you use historical facts to create the background of your protagonist. Therefore, there needs to be enough detail and you cannot just rely on your imagination.
Awareness of the relevant historiography: While it would be impossible to include a detailed historiographical discussion, it would be useful to show the tensions or conflicts your person is experiencing, especially if they are the kinds of conflicts that modern historians have interpreted differently (for example, the nature of heresy, the role of women, demonic possession etc).
A clear, coherent structure.
What not to do:
Your account is for a modern audience; do not attempt to write it in middle English! Use the same language that you would use in a normal essay.
If the person you are writing about is experiencing supernatural phenomena, that’s fine, but do not go into full ACOTAR mode and make it all about fairies!
Submission Information.
You should submit an electronic version of all your work via Tabula, since it will be put through the department's anti-plagiarism software.
For information on marking criteria, formatting, referencing, etc., please see the undergraduate student handbook and the undergraduate style guide.
Please remember to check back to this page for further information updates.
Deadlines & Extension requests.
Most questions about assessment, including submission deadlines and extension requests are answered on the department Submission & Assessment webpages.
Non Submission.
You are required to submit all pieces of assessed work and should note that a mark of zero will be recorded for any essay which is not submitted. The average for the overall assessment mark will in this case be calculated over the total number of essays required, and will result in a much lower average.
