How to Read Primary Sources
I. PRIMARY SOURCES VERSUS SECONDARY SOURCES
Every semester I encounter a few students who remain confused by this
distinction, even after 15 weeks of exciting medieval history. Make
sure you know the difference:
Primary Sources: things written down during the period under study
-examples: diaries, letters, financial accounts, works of literature, philosophy, etc.Secondary Sources: sources written by persons living after the period they are studying
-examples: all textbooks, every work of history, biographies, etc.Grey Areas: what about a biography of the emperor Charlemagne (died 814) written in 950? Primary source
or secondary source? It's a good question. Technically it would be a secondary source, since the author
could have had no direct knowledge of Charles or his time. For the purposes of this course, however, we
will consider as primary sources any source composed by a medieval author.The Straight Dope For History 221:
Primary Sources: all of the texts in Geary; Beowulf; Yvain; the Song of Roland; and the material written by
Abelard and Heloise
Secondary Sources: Hollister (the textbook); me (the prof); you (the student).
HOW TO READ AND INTERPRET PRIMARY SOURCES
Every history class asks you to do two things when you read something:
1) understand what you’ve read; and 2) interpret what you’ve read.
Unlike what some high school history classes seem to imply, the real task
of a historian is in the interpretation of a piece of reading. Interpretation
is difficult, because it requires you to make sense of the facts that you’ve
read and to relate them to other facts or ideas. Here are some suggestions
on how to interpret primary sources; they are arranged as an acronym, AWGGAS.
If you work through each of these steps for each source you read, you will
undoubtedly come away with a deeper and more meaningful understanding of
the source and the period from which it derives.
AWGGAS:
Author
When and where
Genre
Goal
Argument
Significance
A. Author
1. Who is the author?
2. Try to figure out as much as possible about the author. What
was his or her place in society (monk? noble? bishop?) Was he/she
rich? Poor? Educated? Male? Female? English? French? Italian? Why might
this matter? Often you will have to derive some of this information from
the text as you read it (because few authors start out by saying “I’m a
tall rich guy from Poland who lives in a 10-room house”). Sometimes the
editor will provide some biographical information about the person - you
might ask yourselves how the editor learned these facts.
3. If you cannot identify an author, ask yourself why not? Is
authorship always important? Do some types (genres) of sources tend to
lack known authors? Why? How does this affect our interpretation of them?
4. Fill in these blanks: “The person who wrote this text was
and he/she seems to have been __________. These facts are significant
because
.”
B. When and Where
1. When was the text written? Often the writer will not tell
you, and it will be up to you to determine the date of the text. For most
texts, the editor (usually Geary or me) will have provided a date for you.
What is the significance of an undated text? What does it tell us about
the author’s concern about dates, etc.?
2. What else was going on in Europe at the moment the text was
composed? Here you only need to be approximate. It is significant
to know that a text written in the 820s or 830s was composed at a time
in which the Carolingian rulers of Europe were consciously attempting to
revive learning, writing, etc. So it’s worth checking a textbook,
or class discussion, to place each text you read into a context.
3. Where was the text written? Sometimes this can be very important,
as in a text describing the Germanic tribes written by a Roman living in
Rome. In other cases, the place where the text was written (or the
ethnicity of the writer) will not be very significant - since the medieval
church was a pan-European institution, we may not care very much that a
religious treatise was written by an Englishman serving in the papal government
in Rome. In this case ethnicity is secondary to the culture of medieval
Christendom.
4. Answer these questions: “The text was written
[date] in [place] . I also know that
was happening in Europe at around this time.”
C. What Genre does this text fall into?
1. Historians (and other types of scholars) group texts that
share similar features into categories, known as genres. For instance,
a common modern genre is the novel (note that this genre did not exist
in the middle ages). If you describe a given text as a novel, your listener
or reader will immediately gain knowledge about the text (chiefly that
it is fiction, that it is book-length, and that it is probably plot-driven).
What you are reading right now is another sort of modern genre: the course
syllabus; when you here that word (syllabus) you make immediately associations
both about the content of the text and about the purposes for which it
was written.
2. Common medieval genres: letters, saint’s lives, biblical exegesis
(commentary), sermons, royal accounts, monastic charters, communal charters,
chronicles, annals, gestae (secular ‘biographies’), law codes and compilations,
individual ‘laws’ or assizes, philosophical treatises, etc.
3. What genre defines your text? What conventions of the genre
are likely to have shaped how and why the specific author wrote the text?
(that is, a writer of a royal gesta will not usually provide long lists
of accounts or laws, etc.)
4. Answer these questions: “This text is an example of ________
genre. Some of the conventions of this genre are ____________ and I can
see them at work in this text [example]
.”
D. Goal of the text
1. Why did the author compose this text? Is there an obvious
rhetorical or intellectual purpose? Consider saints’ lives (one of
the most popular genres of literature written in the Middle Ages). Regardless
of the details of a specific saint’s life, all saints’ lives shared a common
purpose: to extol the virtues of the saint and to prove his/her sanctity.
Other texts may have less clear purposes - what was the purpose of Domesday
Book, for instance? For such texts you will need to do a bit of imagining
and thinking - remember that no one writes (at least no medieval writer)
simply for the joy of it; there is always at least one purpose or goal
in composing a text of a certain type.
2. What is the genre of the text? Is it a saint’s life? A law
code? A chronicle? An epic romance? Each of these genres of writing has
its own conventions, expectations, and purposes. One way of approaching
the problem of the author’s purpose in writing is to assign the text to
one of the major medieval genres, and then consider the conventions and
goals of the genre.
3. Try to answer this question: “The author wrote this text because
.”
E. Argument of the text [also known as ‘content’]
1. What is the internal argument of the text? That is, what is
it telling us? The “argument” could be as non-argumentative as a recitation
of the deeds of a king’s life, or it could be as focused as a theological
treatise that attempts to prove the existence of God. In other words, some
texts may not seem to have a very strong argument; they may be more narrative
or descriptive. Others will be sharp and focused on having the reader (ie.,
you) understand and agree with a set of points.
2. Again, genre will help make sense of the argument. Make
sure you know what kind of text it is before reading it (or as you read
it); this will help make sense of the author’s agenda.
3. What’s the difference between goal and argument? The two concepts
are, in fact, closely linked. Take the life of Saint Martin, written by
Sulpicius Severus. The purpose of the text is to spread the Christian message
by proving the power and validity of God’s word as demonstrated by the
virtue, piety, and miracles of Martin. The argument is more narrow:
Sulpicius shows how Martin came to be Christian, how he shared his cloak
with a beggar, how he combated pagans with miracles, how he founded a monastery,
and so forth. In a way, the goal is the unstated general purpose of the
author, while the argument is what the text actually says.
4. You may find it most useful to create a short outline of each
text; indicate the main scenes/events, or the main points in the
argument of the author.
F. Significance of the Text (or meaning)
1. This is the most important part of the historical method.
Without interpretation, facts have no meaning. It is up to each historian
- and that includes you! - to assign meaning to each text that you read.
2. Ask yourself “Why should I care about this text?” You might
feel that the correct answer to this question is “I could not care less”,
and that may well be true. However, for my class, you will be forced to
care about each text. Each text has multiple layers of meaning -
some will be personal (I, for instance, derive a bizarre personal meaning
from the Song of Roland that may well be unique to me. Or, someone
just about to get married might find personal meaning in a medieval treatise
on marriage), others will be more cultural (our modern ‘democracy’ cares
about the Magna Carta because it sees in MC some of the seeds of limited
government). More to the point, there will be meanings that are relevant
to History 221. We in History 221, for instance, will certainly acknowledge
the role MC played in the construction of democracies, but we will also
care about it as an example of changing norms of kingship and lordship
in the 12th century; it is, we will see, utterly typical of a broad spectrum
of notions about reciprocal rights and obligations. And since we will be
focusing on such rights and obligations, we will tend to focus on the meanings
of MC that correspond with those interests. All of this is a long
way of saying that there will be themes emphasized in this course, and
that it is up to you (with my help) to come to understand how each text
fits into one of those themes.
3. How does this text relate to other texts? Relational thinking
is one of the most powerful analytical tools possessed by sapient beings.
We can take a discrete fact (or event, or text), and compare and contrast
it to other facts, events, or texts that seem to us worthy of comparison.
Here again the concept of themes will be very important. We will keep returning
to a handful of important themes throughout the course (see the course
intro above); when we encounter a new text, we will first want to consider
which theme (or themes) it belongs with before we go on to compare and
contrast it with other texts relating to that theme.
4. Look for change and continuity over time. Relational thinking
tends to reinforce such trends. We will see that Clovis’ notions about
law and government were fairly different than those of the Theodosian Code.
We have thus identified a change that occurred over time, and we will want
to ask “why” this change occurred.
5. Ask yourself how each text reflects the cultural values and
beliefs of the people, region, and time in which it was written.
This is one of the most obvious ways of getting at significance.
6. Finally, write down an answer to the following: “This text
is important in the context of History 221 because it (for instance)
relates to [these themes] , shows
[these
values] about [this group
of people] , demonstrates [this
sort of change] from [that earlier
period] , etc., etc.”