HIST523

Department of History

Bilkent University

HIST523

England (1300-1600): History and Texts

The purpose of this course is to examine the history of England during the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period through the medium of texts composed in the vernacular (English) language. As such, the course will complement both the other survey-courses on British history and the other linguistic courses (ie., Latin) which must be taken by European history students.

The content of this course will involve two main elements: firstly, a chronological and thematic week-by-week survey of English history during the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and, secondly, weekly readings of different types of vernacular text relating to each week’s historical topic.

Course Syllabus

The main weekly topics wil be as follows:

A. Language: Weeks 1-5

1. Introduction: A Brief History of the English Language

2. Middle English (ME) Morphology and Syntax: Nouns, Pronouns and Adjectives

3. ME Morphology and Syntax: Verbs

4. Early Modern English (EModE) and Scots

5. Test: Comprehension, Dating, and Dialect Exercises

B. History and Texts: Weeks 6-14

6. Fourteenth-Century Politics: Chronicles and Verse

7. The Late Medieval Church: Homilies and Hagiography

8. Fourteenth-Century Society: Langland and Chaucer

9. Late Medieval Towns and Economy: Some Early Guild Documents

10. Government and Administration: Chancery Documents

11. Fifteenth-Century Society and the Wars of the Roses: Letters and Wills

12. The Tudors and the Reformation: Writings of bishop Latimer and others

13. The Elizabethan Parliament: Speeches and Proceedings

14. Conclusion

Course Requirements

The academic assessment of this course will comprise four main criteria:

1) Term Paper: Each student will be expected to research and write a term paper which will be concerned with an aspect of English history during the period circa 1300 to circa 1600. In addition to secondary reading and research, the student will be expected to make extensive use of vernacular primary source material. This term paper will count for 40% of the final grade.

2) Presentation: Each student will be expected to deliver one oral presentation during the semester, on a subject connected with the planned weekly topics (see ‘syllabus’). This presentation will count for 10% of the final grade.

3) Test/Quiz: In week 5 of the course, there will be a quiz which will test your understanding of the main linguistic and grammatical features of Middle English (as surveyed in weeks 2-4). This quiz will count for 10% of the final grade.

4) In-Class Participation: for weeks 6-14, we will spend half of each class reading and discussing documents which I will provide as photocopies. Each student will be expected to prepare for these reading sessions thoroughly every week, and your participation and performance in these sessions will be assessed. This in-class participation will count for 30% of the final grade.

The academic assessment covers 90% of the final grade. The remaining 10% will be based upon your attendance record throughout the semester.

Introductory Bibliography

Our main ‘textbook’ for the course will be:

J. A. Burrow & Thorlac Turville-Petre, A Book of Middle English, 2nd edition (Oxford, 1996): copies have been ordered for the bookstore.

In addition, the following general books can be found in Bilkent library (or on my office shelves!):

Barber, Charles, Early Modern English (London, 1976)

Barber, Charles Laurence, The English Language. A Historical Introduction (Cambridge, 1993)

Bennett, J. A. W. and G. V. Smithers, with Norman Davis, Early Middle English Verse and Prose (Oxford, 1968: 1991)

Burnley, David, The History of the English Language: A Source Book (London and New York, 1992)

Freeborn, Dennis, From Old English to Standard English (Basingstoke and London, 1992)

Görlach, Manfred, Introduction to Early Modern English (Cambridge, 1978)

Gray, Douglas & Norman Davis, The Oxford Book of Late Medieval Verse and Prose (Oxford, 1989)

Hogg, Richard M. (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language (Cambridge, 1992- ), esp. vol. II

McIntosh & others, A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English (Aberdeen, 1986)

Morris, Richard, Specimens of Early English. Part I: From ‘Old English Homilies’ to ‘King Horn’ (Oxford, 1886) [my copy]

Morris, Richard & Walter W. Skeat, Specimens of Early English. Part II: From Robert of Gloucester to Gower, A.D. 1298-A.D. 1393 (Oxford, 1873) [my copy]

Ronberg, Gert, A Way with Words. The Language of English Renaissance Literature (London & New York, 1992)

Schafer, Jurgen, Early Modern English Lexicography (Oxford, 1989)

Sisam, Kenneth, Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose (Oxford, 1921: 1992)

Smith, Jeremy J., Essentials of Early English (London and New York, 1999)

Sweet, Henry, First Middle English Primer (Oxford, 1884) [my copy]

Elaine Treharne, Old and Middle English. An Anthology (Oxford, 2000)

Visser, F. Th., An Historical Syntax of the English Language (Leiden, 1963)

Some Online Resources

TEXTS:

Anthology of Middle English Literature (1350-1485)

The Middle English Collection at the Electronic Text Center

Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse