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Medieval Lives - MST00094M

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  • Department: Centre for Medieval Studies
  • Credit value: 20 credits
  • Credit level: M
  • Academic year of delivery: 2023-24
    • See module specification for other years: 2024-25

Module summary

Throughout the Middle Ages, writers from St Augustine to Christine de Pizan recounted the lives of others and of themselves in diverse ways. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there were longstanding traditions of life-writing about religious people and saints, philosophers and princes, not just in the form of chronological narratives, but also in other genres and forms such as debates, dialogues, visions and letters.

This module will explore the ways in which late medieval French and English writers built upon those traditions to tell the stories of contemporary figures, from religious men and women to kings and aristocrats. These case-studies will open up windows into the diverse experiences of people across late medieval society, and also reveal important developments in writing and thinking about the past: many late medieval writers espoused standards of evidence that seem distinctly modern, drawing on reliable written sources, interviewing eyewitnesses, and cross-checking their facts wherever possible; others freely embellished and invented not only events and dialogue but the sources to support them. The module will also consider the ways in which writers and narrators inserted their own voices into their stories, together with wider developments in autobiographical writing, memoirs and eyewitness accounts by laymen that offer less mediated access to the ideas, values and emotions of different groups within society.

Module will run

Occurrence Teaching period
A Semester 1 2023-24

Module aims

The aims of this module are to:

  • Develop skills of source analysis and interpretation
  • Assess a range of source material and relevant secondary works; and
  • Develop students’ powers of evidence-based historical argument, both orally and in writing.

Module learning outcomes

Students who complete this module successfully will:

  • Demonstrate a knowledge of a specialist historiographical literature;
  • Present findings in an analytical framework derived from a specialist field;
  • Solve a well-defined historiographical problem using insights drawn from secondary and, where appropriate, primary sources.
  • Set out written findings using a professional scholarly apparatus.

Module content

Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1. Students will then attend a 2-hour seminar in weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing (RAW) weeks during which there are no seminars, and during which students research and write a formative essay, consulting with the module tutor. Students prepare for eight seminars in all.

Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:

  1. Medieval Traditions of Life-Writing
  2. The Chandos Herald and the Black Prince
  3. Biographies of King Henry V
  4. John Blacman and King Henry VI
  5. The Chivalric Biography of Marshal Boucicaut
  6. Joan of Arc
  7. The Boke of Margery Kempe
  8. The fictional life of ‘Le Jouvencel’

Indicative assessment

Task % of module mark
Essay/coursework 100

Special assessment rules

None

Indicative reassessment

Task % of module mark
Essay/coursework 100

Module feedback

Students have the opportunity to submit a formative essay of up to 2,000 words and receive written or oral feedback, as appropriate, from a tutor. For the summative essay (3500-4000 words), students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback in line with the University's turnaround policy. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required.

Indicative reading

For reading during the module, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:

  • Winstead, Karen A. The Oxford History of Life-Writing Volume I: The Middle Ages. (Oxford, 2018.)
  • Delogu, Daisy. Theorizing the Ideal Sovereign. The Rise of the French Vernacular Royal Biography. (Toronto, 2008.)
  • Ed. Joel T. Rosenthal, Understanding Medieval Primary Sources. Using Historical Sources to Discover Medieval Europe. (Abingdon, 2012.)


The information on this page is indicative of the module that is currently on offer. The University constantly explores ways to enhance and improve its degree programmes and therefore reserves the right to make variations to the content and method of delivery of modules, and to discontinue modules, if such action is reasonably considered to be necessary. In some instances it may be appropriate for the University to notify and consult with affected students about module changes in accordance with the University's policy on the Approval of Modifications to Existing Taught Programmes of Study.