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 3,000 word Essay (40%) Term II week 8: You can base your essay on one of the seminar questions. You can change the questions slightly to make them more focused (for example: 'Who held power in medieval towns in Italy?'). Alternatively, you can formulate your own question, but please check with your seminar tutor if you are intending to do this.
- 1 x 4,500 word Essay (or equivalent) (50%): ‘Day in the Life...with historiographical analysis’
Write a 2,500-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 someone real (for example, Pope Innocent III). The account needs to provide credible detail on the person’s context (what they are wearing, what they eat, their encounters with other people around them and so on). Then write a 2,000-word essay discussing the historical background that supports the first part of the assignment. For example, if your fictional account focuses on someone accused of Cathar heresy, the second part of the essay needs to discuss the historiography around this topic, much like a usual essay would.
Marking Criteria: The Departmental 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 chosen 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 in both parts of the essay 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: You need to provide a historiographical discussion in the second part of the essay. Here, it would be useful to explain 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 is essential to both parts.
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 to write all your essays.
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.
