Fall 2011 Final Exam

Instructions: Answer TWO of the following in essay form. An adequate answer will be at least 3 pages using the same formatting standards as the research paper. Your responses will be graded according to how well thought out they are and how well they incorporate the reading assignments. They will be due in my office on Friday of Finals Week between 11 and noon. I will only accept hardcopies. If you would like to submit your materials earlier please that will be possible, but please let me know in advance.

1) The texts by Ladurie, Fossier, and Schmitt are all accounts of the lives of ordinary people during the Middle Ages; people who made up over 90% of medieval society yet appear very little in the historical documents. What are some of the ways in which their worldview differed from that of more learned or elite culture? How did these differences originate? Describe the relationship between official and "popular" or "folk" culture?

2) Describe the "Twelfth-Century Renaissance" and the social, economic, political, and cultural changes it brought. What were the factors that led to this Renaissance? What was the aristocratic response?

3) Why is the fourteenth century described as a century of "crisis"? How did this time of crisis transform medieval society?