English History to 1688
Fall 2008
This course surveys England's history from the end of the Roman occupation of the island through the transfer of Power to Queen Anne. Though the course moves very quickly at the beginning, and indeed quickly throughout the semester, it is not designed to be a remorseless progression of narrative historic incidents, but rather a study of the intellectual composition and mindset of the various periods—which intrinsically carries with it a focus on the Court. We shall examine the arrival of Christianity, the prolonged period of the Norse raids, the Norman Conquest, and the fundamental change which Norman government brought about. It must be said that the course moves quickly through the Middle Ages (around one month will be spent on Pre-Tudor England) and then begins its concentration with the establishment of a unified Government by Henry VII: it then goes into some substantial depth when studying the Tudor Dynasty and the Reformation before moving on to an equally in depth examination of the Seventeenth Century and the Civil wars of England.
The course is designed to introduce you to the analytical process of the practice of history ('historiography') through the examination of period sources (primary sources) in conjunction with and illuminated by critical engagement with twentieth-century secondary sources: an engagement which seeks to identify the historians' own intellectual agendas. Because of this the course has substantial doses of reading accompanied by serious opportunities for-out-of-class writing.
The course is taught dialogically: and though I will doubtless spend some period of each class lecturing, this lecture should illuminate and broaden knowledge gained from the assignments. Students are expected to come to class having prepared the materials and primed with questions and points of discussion. I should hope to do no more than (at most) two thirds of the talking in each session. Each student will write four short essays. (They should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 to 2,000 words though I am far from fixated on length! If the essay makes its substantive point of interpretation compellingly in 1,200 words then all the more impressive.) There will also be a three hour final exam during exam week which will seek to collect the discussions of the entire term. The due dates of the essays will be agreed by the class (there is some flexibility) to accommodate students' other class schedules.
Assigned books may include:
Asser, Life of Alfred the Great
Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors
Mark Kishlansky, A Monarchy Transformed: England, 1603-1714
Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down
John Kenyon: The Civil Wars of England
David Lagomarsino and Charles Wood, The Trial of Charles I
Nigel Saul, Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval England
David Wootton, ed., Divine Right and Democracy: An Anthology of Political Writing