Medieval Monarchs in Print. (Essay assignment, His 3100, Fall 2001)

What did the Tudors and the Stuarts think about earlier English monarchs? Compare and contrast what they wrote about two Medieval monarchs, using the evidence from works printed before 1700. Use at least four early modern printed sources (two each) comprising at least twenty-five useful pages. What aspects of their rule did the works discuss? What did they leave out? What were seen as the monarch’s strengths? Weaknesses? Compare the views taken with that of selected secondary/reference works. What is useful about the Tudor/Stuart view?

This assignment requires you to use Early English Books Online (EEBO), which provides full-text (images), searching, and citations for over 125,000 titles: from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War, to about 1700. Eastern Illinois University has a trial version access to this.

Logon Procedures: http://wwwlib.umi.com/eebo                 Passwords are case sensitive.

EEBO Through end of August:

            Account Name: beaumont

            Password: welcome

EEBO Through end of September:

           Account Name: fletcher

           Password: welcome

Go the the website http://wwwlib.umi.com/eebo and scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "Enter." That will bring up two boxes in which you type the account name and password above. Enter and you can now search all books printed in English before about 1700. That is you can bring up on your screen, print, and save to your hard drive virtually any early printed book in English. Files are saved as .pdf files which means you need to have the Adobe Acrobat reader, downloadable (free) from http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/main.html

Aug. 30. Medieval monarchs pre-assignment 1 due. [Print pamphlet title-page and full-text citation (long title) for work printed 300, 400, or 500 years before you were born.]

Sept. 13. Medieval monarchs pre-assignment 2 due. [Print out full-text citation of at least ten printed works on the two monarchs you are comparing (at least five each). Write one, typed, double-spaced paragraph on what can be learned about early modern views of your monarchs from the dates published, the full titles, and other bibliographic information.]

Sept. 20. Medieval monarchs pre-assignment 3 due. [Print enough copies for the entire class of 2 pages of your best early modern printed pamphlet/work and bring to class prepared to discuss.]

Oct. 4. Medieval monarchs paper due.