Module manager: Dr Simon Quinn
Email: S.Quinn@leeds.ac.uk
Taught: Semester 1 (Sep to Jan) View Timetable
Year running 2024/25
This module is approved as a discovery module
Early modern Europe was alive with voices. Exploring gossip, rumour, blasphemy, insult, slander, news, oratory, and song, this course offers a new way of understanding the history of speech, language, and communication in the early modern world. We will use a wide range of sources, from broadsheet ballads to anatomical texts, and from Inquisition records to accounts of New World explorations, to rediscover the cultures of orality and communication of the past. How do we write histories of speech in premodern periods? Is there an oral history of the Renaissance, or the Reformation? How can we listen to the voices of ordinary people in early modern Europe? This course uses the noisy world of early modern Europe to think about questions of politics, media, urban history, gender, social hierarchies, religious change, intellectual history, and the birth of European global empires.
The objectives of this module are:
- to explore and understand the history of orality, speech, and communication in early modern Europe
- to introduce the concepts associated with the history of oral culture in premodern periods
- to work critically with primary materials in seminars and through independent study
- to encounter new perspectives on the cultural, social, and political history of early modern Europe
On completion of this module, students will be able to
- understand the place of the spoken word in the history of early modern Europe
- relate the history of orality to questions of cultural, social, and political change
- work critically with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources
- use printed editions and online databases of early modern primary source materials
- present researched materials confidently
- write clearly and critically, engaging with primary and secondary source material
Topics covered in lectures and seminars may include speech crimes, the oral
history of the Renaissance, religion and the spoken word, the voices of women, slang and
secret languages, the history of silence, language-learning, and voices in the archives.
| Delivery type | Number | Length hours | Student hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lecture | 11 | 1 | 11 |
| Tutorial | 9 | 1 | 9 |
| Private study hours | 180 | ||
| Total Contact hours | 20 | ||
| Total hours (100hr per 10 credits) | 200 | ||
Students will be expected to read primary source extracts and secondary literature in advance of the seminars, as well as pursuing independent reading and research to prepare for class discussion, presentations, and assessments. Students will contribute VLE posts, and research and write an assessed essay.
Students' class contributions and VLE contributions will be assessed continuously and feedback offered where necessary. Individual and group tutorials will be offered to students.
| Assessment type | Notes | % of formal assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Assignment | 2,000-word ‘Voices in the archives’ exercise. | 40 |
| Essay | 3,000-word research essay chosen in consultation with module tutor, | 60 |
| Total percentage (Assessment Coursework) | 100 | |
Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated
The reading list is available from the Library website
Last updated: 10/18/2024
Errors, omissions, failed links etc should be notified to the Catalogue Team