Family Story (2000-2500 words)

Family Story (2000-2500 words)

In this piece of historical fiction, you will tell the story of a common family living through the Reformation and/or Counter-Reformation in some part of Europe.  Depending on the region on which you focus, your story may start earlier (for example, around the year 1400 for Prague versus around 1500 for the Germanic lands), but your family story must cover at least 100 years.  For some regions, this means that you will spend more time talking about Catholicism than Protestantism, but either the Reformation or the Counter-Reformation must feature prominently in your narrative.  Through the course of this essay, you will demonstrate an understanding of how reform from above and/or below impacted the general populace in your region.

1)    Determine where you wish your family to live; depending on the region in question, your family will experience reform at different times and in different ways.

2)    Map out the course of the family’s lives; keep in mind that every generation must live long enough to have at least one child, or the family line will end.  Much of the story you tell will be determined by how the Reformation and/or Counter-Reformation proceeded in your area.

3)    The events should include not only questions of reform but also some local (like weather patterns) and/or personal issues (such as economic trouble for your family); these may all be related to each other.

• In addition to our course readings, you must locate and utilize:

–       at least five scholarly secondary sources focused on the Reformation/Counter-Reformation and/or peasant life in the region.

o   Websites are almost exclusively not appropriate sources for this assignment.

o   You may use only one encyclopedia entry for basic facts, and this does not count as a scholarly source.

–       at least five primary sources.  Your family may interact with these sources (by reading or viewing them), or you may simply use them to provide background to the family’s story.

• Your essay must include citations (with page numbers) for all information, not only for direct quotations, and you need to include a bibliography (split between primary and secondary sources and then alphabetized).

• NB: For Family Stories that begin before 1517 and are not influenced by John Wycliffe or Jan Hus (or other pre-Reformation reformers), do not foreshadow the Reformation.  Your family is extremely unlikely to question its Catholic beliefs or traditions, and this is likely to add ahistoricity into your accounts.