History 331: Home, History 331: Schedule of Readings and Assignments

Grimmelshausen, Adventures of a Simpleton, 1-50; *John Theibault, "The Rhetoric of Death and Destruction in the Thirty Years War," Journal of Social History 27 (1993): 271-90.

Assignment:

Devise at least two questions that address (a) essential factual content in each of the assigned readings and (b) one or two questions that elicit a broader discussion of each of the assigned readings. You and your classmates should be able to answer the factual questions in a sentence or two. They should allow us to demonstrate our familiarity with the readings. Avoid trivial matters and basic questions of definition. Pose real questions, not pseudo-questions that really are commands, e.g. Discuss... For examples of both types of questions see the questions I developed for the article by Mortimer. Of these, the first two questions correspond to factual questions, and the last two to discussion questions. To be more precise, the second is a hybrid question. The question about sources is factually oriented, whereas the question about your opinion about reliability could generate a longer discussion.

Type up your questions on one sheet of paper. You will submit your questions at the beginning of class. I will not accept assignments that are not typed or are not submitted at the beginning of class. Two small committees of students will quickly review the assignments and choose from them questions that the class will answer as a whole or in smaller groups.

Your assignment should look something like this:

John Theibault, "The Rhetoric of Death and Destruction in the Thirty Years War," Journal of Social History 27 (1993): 271-90.

Factual Questions

1.

2.

Discussion Question(s)

1.

2.

Grimmelshausen, Adventures of a Simpleton ... with the categorization of questions as above.

We will discuss Theibault first.

Some notes on Theibault: Note that he lays out the fundamental approach of his article on pp. 273-75. For salva guardia see Asch, The Thirty Years War, 181. Note the reference to Sabean. From him we learned the terms Amtsmann and superintendent. Schutz und Schirm means protection as in unter seinem Schutz und Schirm = under his protection. From the context I infer that Theibault refers to a protection owed by rulers / lords to their subjects.

Please read pp. 247-49 of Adventures of a Simpleton for some background on Grimmelshausen. Most of the authoritative work on him and his writings is in German. For fun you can visit the biography courtesy of Project Gutenberg, the German text of Der Abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch, as well as the Grimmelshausen society. Yes, all of these sites are in German, but there is no harm in looking at what at least 90,000,000 people can read.

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