PERIOD GENERAL EXAMINATION         DUMMY QUESTIONS

The following are dummy questions designed to give you a sense of the kind and range of questions that will appear on the Period II section of the end of term examination. Do not draw any conclusions about the actual questions likely to be posed on the basis of what appears here. Because there is, for example, a question here about rural society, this does not mean that a question on a related theme is less likely (or more likely) on the actual paper. Our concern is to provide you with an opportunity to show your knowledge of the broader period and not to probe your understanding of very narrowly defined topics:

'Rural society was essentially unchanging. One peasant was much like
another.' How far do you agree with this verdict?

'The Black Death transformed the medieval world.' Discuss.

What challenges did aristocracies face in late medieval Europe?

Why was religion so important to late medieval society?

Was later medieval society characterised by order or by conflict?

Some advice

The purpose of the assessment is to to find out what you know, not what you don't know. In tackling any question, therefore, you should marshal material you feel most comfortable with and find ways of making this fit the question posed. Because you have half a day to write each period answer, you also have quite a lot of thinking and planning time. Do take advantage of this.

The questions posed for Period II are deliberately designed to range beyond the themes of the weekly topics. Even if they look to be more focused, you are encouraged to think about how a particular issue or theme might be pertinent to other topics as well.

To take the first question as an example, this most immediately relates to the topic of the first week on peasant society, but because it asks about change over time, then it would also seem appropriate to consider the impact of the Black Death. Another issue, however, that could be factored in is the changing relationship of the crown to the peasantry, notably in respect of taxation and legislation.

Clearly there are many different issues you could talk about. The diverse and socially mixed nature of peasant communities would be one issue. The implications of different kinds of agriculture (eg. arable, pastoral) or different kinds of tenure associated with different kinds of status and lordship (eg servile labour, mezzadria [share cropping] etc.) would be another. Differences in patterns of householding / social structure (eg nuclear families, stem-families etc.) could constitute another facet of difference and diversity. On the other hand you could usefully talk about gender difference (and refer, for example to the 'Ballad of the Tyrannical Husband' or the work Barbara Hanawalt) or you could think about the degree to which the peasantry accepted or preferred a stable and essentially unchanging world (suggested for example by the notion of 'custom') or, conversely, moved for change (lord / peasant conflict, peasant revolts etc.).

This is a substantial agenda and it would be possible to add to it. The point is, however, that a good answer would not necessarily be one that tried to talk about all these issues. Indeed the danger would be that such an essay would end up being very superficial. Rather a good essay would outline something of the diversity of possible issues, but then identify two or three as ones that were to be developed in greater depth. In the final paragraph you can usefully relate the specific themes back to the wider range of issues. This would allow you to offer more substantive analysis of particular issues. But it would also allow you to decide which issues you were going to talk about at length. Thus one person might decide to make differences in patterns of householding and changes in types of agricultural practice the main themes of their essay, but another might prefer to focus on gender difference and peasant revolt. The one would not be marked down because it did not discuss at length the issues treated at length in the other. Each essay would be marked on its own merits. (Though of course the underlying reason that one essay talked about householding and not gender and vice versa is that this is what the candidate knew about or did not know about!) It is only the essays that talk about town society or ignore change over time as an issue that would automatically be marked down.

Remember, this is a (Western) European history course. So the more you try to reflect the diversity of cultural experience or give examples from across Europe (and not just England) the better.