Textual Analysis Exercises:

Take any of the primary documents we have read on the People's Crusade or the First Crusade (Allen and Amt, 47-80). Write an 800-1000 word essay (think about four pages) that analyzes the document. An essay means that it will have an introduction, a conclusion, and make transitions from point to point. The essay must be typed, and double-spaced. It will be graded BOTH for style and for content.

Preparation:

• Make sure you can fully identify the work you have chosen. This involves:
  1. Learning the title of the work, its author (if one can be identified), and relevant information about the author;
  2. Considering what kind of work it is, in other words, its genre; (is it a chronicle, a philosophical treatise, a trial record, a charter, a diary, an autobiography, a novel, a short story, a diplomatic dispatch, a sermon, a law code, or something else altogether?)
  3. Situating the work as precisely as you can in time and space; (when and where was the work composed? It (almost) goes without saying that you cannot understand what insight a text has to offer into the time and place in which it was written if you do not know when and where that was.)
  4. Beginning, in a preliminary way, to think about how the answers to 1, 2, and 3 will help you analyze your source and its historical significance.
• Read the text very carefully.
  • This entails going through the work piece by piece and focusing on the key moments. Bear in mind that for some periods of pre-modern history very few original source materials survive. It is therefore imperative that you extract from the work absolutely all the information about the time and place it was written that you can. To do this, you will need to make sure you understand the technical and foreign terms that might appear in the work. If there are words you do not understand, look them up.
• Be able to summarize in your own words the main points or events/subjects of the passage, describing its content.
• Develop an analysis of the source.
  • You can focus your analysis by answering the following questions.
    • What was the aim or purpose of the author in writing the work? Was it to provide accurate information? to win an argument? to tell a funny story? to justify his/her actions? to outline a course of action for the future? to indulge his/her own vanity?
    • How does the author of the work try to achieve his/her goals? The idea here is to think about the structure of the work and the methods of its author. For example, if the text seems intended to win the reader over to a certain point of view, how does it make its case? Is there a carefully structured and logically coherent appeal to reason (as one might find in a work of philosophy)? Is there an appeal to the emotions (as one might find in a poem)? Is evidence carefully cited in support of its claims? Note that the question of the author's purpose and how it is achieved is often closely related to the question of genre: how does the genre of a work affect your understanding of its value as a source of historical information?
    • Who is the intended audience for the work? Are there assumptions the audience would need to make in order to accept the statements/claims/assertions of the work? Is there evidence in the work of a common worldview shared by the author and the audience?
• Think about what this source tells us about the larger themes of the course. Look back on class discussion notes for the kinds of issues you should be addressing, but be prepared to work with the subject in much greater depth.

Composition - Remember this is an essay. It should flow. That said, be sure to address the following points (in whatever order and method you find appropriate)

1. Identify the work from which this quotation has been taken: indicate the work's title, author, time and place of composition, broader historical period, and genre.
2. Summarize in your own words the main point(s) of the passage and describe how it fits into the larger text from which it has been excerpted.
3. Analyze the passage closely. Explain the author's aims, methods, and intended audiences as carefully as you can. What are his or her goals, and how does the author meet those goals (or fail).
4. Relate this passage to its historical period and the larger themes of the course. What in particular does it tell you about medieval women and their lives? What is the broader historical significance of this passage? Be specific and base your contentions upon evidence drawn from the text. Do not quote too heavily, however. You get points for your ideas, not your ability to copy from the sourcebook.