1. Concepts and Methods
Textual evidence

2. Does evidence ‘speak for itself’?
it is through the primary sources that the past indisputably imposes its reality on the historian. That this imposition is basic in any understanding of the past is clear from the rules that documents should not be altered, or that any material damaging to a historian's argument or purpose should not be left out or suppressed. These rules mean that the sources or the texts of the past have an integrity and that they do indeed 'speak for themselves', and that they are necessary constraints through which past reality imposes itself on the historian.
(E. Sreedharan, A Textbook of Historiography, 500 B.C. to A.D (2004), p. 302)

3. The complexity of evidence
History is a complex process of understanding—evidence, context, interpretation, and writing interact with each other in a kind of interpretative circle.
Evidence and theory/concepts interact (also in a circular way)—evidence is understood in light of theoretical models; theoretical models are understood in light of the evidence.
Historians select evidence—the historical process involves distinguishing between what is/seems relevant and what is/seems trivial.

4. Long essay questions
What challenges are presented by textual sources, and do they provide our best access to the past?
2. What are the challenges to the historian of visual and/or material evidence, and in what ways does this evidence enhance our understanding of the past?
3. To what extent is memory problematic to historical practice and our understanding of the past?
4. Do new technologies (digital technologies and/or television and film) offer new insights into the past, or do they raise new problems?
5. ‘We are... successful in knowing far more of the past than the past itself had thought good to tell us.’ (Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft (Manchester, 1954), p. 51.) Discuss Bloch’s comment in relation to both the role of the historian and the interpretation of evidence.

5. Sources: some considerations in relation to your long essay
Your long essay (worth 75%) will be from one of the questions on this block.
One possibility is to think of evidence in relation to topics on your other courses.
How do you interpret this evidence? What questions do you need to ask? What are the limitations and problems with different types of evidence (e.g. textual, visual, material, and oral)?
Think of evidence in light of some of the approaches we have considered so far on the course: how do debates around objectivity and postmodernism relate to our understanding of evidence? How might gender and postcolonial theory affect the questions we ask and the answers we find? Do other disciplines offer new insights into our interpretation of evidence? Do competing methods and approaches create or lessen problems in interpreting evidence?

6. Thinking about textual evidence: some possibilities
Leonard E. Boyle’s ‘Montaillou Revisited’, in J. A. Raftis (ed.), Pathways to Medieval Peasants (1981), pp (on VLE under Annales; a critique of Ladurie’s use of texts).
Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (1976; Eng. trans. 1980), a famous example of the textual interpretation of Inquisitorial records.
Roger Chartier, ‘Text, Symbols, Frenchness’, Journal of Modern History, 57 (1985), pp ; critiques Robert Darnton’s interpretation of the text at the centre of his essay on ‘The Great Cat Massacre’ (a translated and abridged version of the text itself is appended at the end of Darnton’s essay; an electronic edition of The Great Cat Massacre is available in Goldsmiths’ library).
You might also find useful Patrick Rael’s short article ‘How to Read a Primary Source’ (on the VLE under this week’s class).

7. Texts: some general considerations
Huge variety and quantity of textual evidence: printed and manuscript (lit. ‘written by hand’) sources; books, newspapers, diaries, letters, official records, memos…
When researching a topic familiarize yourself with the resources, e.g. the libraries and archives, online resources, and printed resources (e.g. if researching parliament you would need to be familiar with Hansard).
Consider why some records have survived and not others, and why there are gaps in the records; do you think the surviving records from a period are an accurate reflection of the age, or do they reflect a particular viewpoint of a particular social group?
Consider the transmission and production of texts; what may be the problems of scribal culture? what may be the problems of print culture? what may be the problems of digital texts?
Think about who is writing and for whom.

8. Using primary sources Identification What type of document is it?
Who produced it? Do you know anything about the author/creator?
When was it written/produced?
Why was it written/produced?
Understanding
Consider the key words and their meaning within the source.
What points or arguments are made in the source?
What values or attitudes does the content of the source reflect?
How does the content of the source relate to a given historical situation?
Are there any clues about the intended audience for the source?
How reliable is the source and does it have any limitations?
How does it relate to other sources from this period? Does it share the same ideas, attitudes and arguments? How would you explain any differences between these sources?
(From:

9. Record of marriages in a Nottinghamshire parish, 1600
Record of deaths in London, 1665

10. Record of baptisms in Norton and Lenchwick, Worcestershire, 1698

11. Medieval scriptoria

12. The ‘Wicked Bible’, a 1631 reprint of the King James Version; spot the printing error…

13. The two quartos of King Lear; the first, above, published in 1608, the second, at top right, published in 1619 (despite the date 1608 on the title-page); the edition in the First Folio (1623), right, was based on the second quarto

14. The Donation of Constantine (Donatio Constantini)
A document, purportedly issued by the first Christian emperor, Constantine I ( ), granting temporal power in western Christendom to Pope Sylvester I and his successors. The Renaissance humanist, Lorenzo Valla (c ), proved the Donation to be an 8th-century forgery.
Above is a 13th-century fresco depicting Constantine, Sylvester and the Donation.

15. Pages from the ‘Hitler diaries’

16. Title-page of Eikon Basilike, the Porutraicture [sic] of His Sacred Maiestie in His Solitudes and Sufferings (1649), with frontispiece above

17. What is this?

19. Etymology of the word ‘text’
‘texere’ (Latin)— ‘to weave, to fabricate (i.e. to make or construct’
‘textus’ (Latin)— ‘tissue, something constructed, particularly in relation to written language’
‘contexere’ (Latin)— ‘to weave together’

20. Publicity for We Will Rock You:
‘[The songs] remind you how fabulous Queen were’—The Independent
‘stunning… the massive plasma screens are killer-diller’—The Times
or will we…?

21. ‘[The songs] remind you of how fabulous Queen were… But it’s hard to see the point of making a musical out of them when you can simply go out and buy a record.’—Fiona Sturges, The Independent
‘Ultimately, for all its stunning looks—the massive plasma-screens are killer-diller, and all the cast have good shoes—We Will Rock You is just too straight. The script remains little more than two-minute blasts of knob gags and misplaced polemic between songs, and the musical numbers have nothing to do with the script. I’m sure that Freddie [Mercury] would have bunked off halfway through . . .’, 1 star—Caitlin Moran, The Times
(“That was probably the worst review I’ve ever given anything. I see that [the use of a quote out of context as part of the musical’s publicity] as a slur on my reputation. No wonder people haven’t been trying to chat me up for the past few years — they think I like We Will Rock You.”—Caitlin Moran)

22. The Twitter Joke Trial

24. Engraved portrait of Charles II, c
Engraved portrait of Charles II, c , with standard rendering of the king’s titles at top left. Was Charles II also King of France?

25. The Ordinary’s Account from The Old Bailey Online (http://www

26. Quantity of textual evidence: examples
More than 14 million books in the British Library
Over 1 mile of shelving is added to the National Archives each year
The Thomason Tracts (pamphlets, newsbooks, and other printed ephemera from the period , collected by George Thomason) total 22,000 items and are bound in 2,000 volumes

27. Texts, evidence and objectivity
The case of Gustav Stresemann (from E. H. Carr’s What Is History? pp )
Gustav Stresemann ( ), Foreign Minister during the Weimar Republic, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1926
Left 300 boxes of his papers at his death
Edited by his secretary, Bernhard, into a 3-volume work, Stresemanns Vermächtnis (Stresemann’s Legacy) in 1932
Selections from Bernhard’s work were translated into English in 1935

28. Texts and their context
A piece of text (e.g. an extract) needs to be understood within its textual context, i.e. its relationship to the surrounding text.
A text needs to be understood in its historical context, e.g. against its political, social, religious, cultural and intellectual background.
A text is evidence for the time in which it is reason, e.g. evidence for the politics, society, religion, culture and/or ideas of its age…
…so, there is a circular process of understanding a text through an understanding of the age in which it was written, and understanding the age in which it was written through an understanding of the text—similar to the ‘hermeneutic circle’ by which the whole is understood by its parts and the parts by the whole…
…and theory and interpretative sources can be added to this circle.
Is this problematic? The context aids our understanding of the text; the text aids our understanding of the context. Theory and interpretative sources aid our understanding of both, which in turn aid our understanding of the theory and interpretative sources…