2 November 2005
Answer ALL parts of BOTH questions. You have TWO HOURS for this test. We recommend that you spend about a third of that time on reading, thinking and planning, and the rest of the time writing. Question One should take about twice as much time as Question Two.
If you find the texts difficult and unfamiliar, don’t worry: the exercise is intended to be challenging, but we hope you will also find it thought-provoking. There is no ‘right’ answer to many of the questions: you will be judged on the intelligence of your case, how clearly you make it and how effectively you support it.
Please do not turn over until you are asked to.
QUESTION ONE (70 marks)
This is an adapted section from a book about chivalry. Please read through the extract carefully and think about what it is trying to say. You do not need to know anything about chivalry or medieval history to answer the questions below.
‘The age of chivalry is gone: that of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded: and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.’ It was the plight of Marie Antoinette [1] that inspired Edmund Burke’s [2] indignant cry, and there is a certain appropriateness about identifying the death of chivalry with the end of the French ancien régime.[3] But most people, I imagine, would suppose that the age of chivalry had passed a good long time before 1789. If a genuine age of chivalry is to be sought, it is surely in the middle ages, and not the early modern age, that most would locate it, somewhere between, say, the year 1100 and the beginning of the sixteenth century. But was there ever, really, an age of chivalry, even then? Was chivalry ever more than a polite veneer, a matter of forms rather than a social influence of any significance, let alone the ‘glory of Europe’? And if it ever was more than a matter of forms and words, what was it? These are the questions which it is the object of this book to investigate, and they are not easy questions to answer.
Chivalry is an evocative word, conjuring up images in the mind – of the knight fully armed, perhaps with the crusaders’ red cross sewn upon his surcoat; of martial adventures in strange lands; of castles with tall towers and of the fair women who dwelt in them. It is also, for that very reason, a word elusive of definition. One can define within reasonably close limits what is meant by the word knight, the French word chevalier: it denotes a man of aristocratic standing and probably of noble ancestry, who is capable, if called upon, of equipping himself with a war horse and the arms of a heavy cavalryman, and who has been through certain rituals that make him what he is – who has been ‘dubbed’ to knighthood. But chivalry, the abstraction from chevalier, is not so easily pinned down. It is a word that was used in the middle ages with different meanings and shades of meaning by different writers and in different contexts. Sometimes, especially in early texts, it means no more than a body of heavily armed horsemen, a collective of chevaliers. Sometimes chivalry is spoken of as an order, as if knighthood ought to be compared to a religious order: sometimes it is spoken of as a rank, a social class – the warrior class whose martial function, according to medieval writers, was to defend the patria [4] and the Church. Sometimes it is used to encapsulate a code of values appropriate to this order or rank. Chivalry cannot be divorced from the martial world of the mounted warrior: it cannot be divorced from aristocracy, because knights commonly were men of high lineage: and from the middle of the twelfth century on it very frequently carries ethical or religious overtones. But it remains a word elusive of definition, tonal rather than precise in its implications. If we are to get any way towards deciding whether chivalry was, in the period between about 1100 and about 1500, a social influence of any significance, we shall need at the outset to find sources that give some reasonably extended account of what the word could and should mean, since it is plainly not a word that can be pinned down clearly and succinctly in a dictionary definition.
(a) Summarise in not more than 100 words the first paragraph of this passage.
(10 marks)
(b) Assess why the author thinks that it is difficult to provide a definition of chivalry. Write an answer of about one side in length.
(20 marks)
(c) In an essay of two or three sides, discuss the difficulties involved in defining a significant social group or political or religious idea in a society or period with which you are familiar.
(40 marks)
QUESTION TWO (30 marks)
This is an adapted extract from a piece of oral history describing a Nigerian woman’s marriage. You are not expected to know anything about its context, but you will be asked to make inferences about it.
Her marriage celebration was greater than any other that had taken place at the palace, a celebration befitting the important status of her husband. He was famous everywhere in the country for having co-operated with the British when they first arrived in Katsina. At that time [i.e. during the arrival of the British] Muhammadu Dikko was not yet Emir [5], but was known as a counsellor [Durbi]. Because of his success with the British colonial officers he was made Emir of Katsina. He saw to it that Ma’daki reached Katsina accompanied by her slaves, her dowry, [6] and her parents’ gifts of grains and other foods – corn, millet, rice, wheat, palm oil, groundnut oil, butter, etc. – for her new in-laws. Everything was loaded on horses and camels because at that time there were no cars. After she reached Katsina another wedding celebration was held and this one was even bigger than the one held in Kano. Some years after the wedding the Emir decided to take Ma’daki around the countryside to show her his domain. After that he decided to take her everywhere he went.
What does this extract from an oral history tell us about the nature of power and status in Nigeria in the early twentieth century? (Write about one to two sides.)
End of paper
Notes
[1] Queen of France at the time of the French Revolution, executed in 1793.
[2] An English Conservative who opposed the French Revolution.
[3] Literally ‘the former regime’. A reference to the monarchy that ruled France before 1789
[4] Latin word for ‘homeland’.
[5] Ruler.
[6] Property or money brought by a bride to her husband.
