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Second
Paper Assignment Due Monday, April 21 at 4:00 p.m., 3229 Dwinelle Hall |
1. Is European history until the First World War a story of progress or decline according to different thinkers and sources? Include as part of your answer each author’s view of human nature and the specific historical events that may have shaped each author's view of humanity and history. 2. To what extent does The Communist Manifesto succeed in comprehensively describing the rise and fall of modern industrial capitalism? In responding, consider the arguments of Marx & Engels in terms of politics, economics, philosophy, and history. In light of other course materials, how would you improve on their account? 3. Compare and contrast the historical origins of and the
impact on European history that resulted from the French Revolution
and the Russian Revolution. |
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Document Summary
On page 316 of Spielvogel is an extract from Petrarch's work The Ascent
of Mount Ventoux, one of the literary classics of the Italian Renaissance
(also see below).
Your assignment is to write a single typed page (carefully proof-read)
summary of this document (250 words maximum).
You will not need to do any additional research in order to complete
the assignment BUT make sure you read the relevant section of Spielvogel,
chapter 12, p.316.
The summary is due, along with the map assignment, in your section
leaders’ boxes in the History Department main office, 3229 Dwinelle,
on Friday January 24th at 4pm.
Here is the extract:
Pretrarch has long been regarded as me father of Italian
Renaissance humanism. One of his literary masterpieces was The
Ascent of Mount Ventoux, A colorful description of an attempt
to climb a mountain in Province in southern France and survey the
world from its top. Petrarch's primary interest is in presenting an
allegory of his own soul’s struggle to achieve a higher spiritual
state. The work is addressed to a professor of theology in Paris who
had initially led Petrarch to read Augustine. The latter had experienced
a vivid conversion to Christianity almost a thousand years earlier.
Petrarch, The Ascent of Mount Ventoux
"Today I ascended the highest mountain in this region, which, not without cause, they call the Windy Peak. Nothing but the desire to see its conspicuous height was the reason for this undertaking. For many years I have been intending to make this expedition. You know that since my early childhood, as fate tossed around human affairs, I have been tossed around in these parts, and this mountain, visible far and wide from everywhere, is always in your view. So I was at last seized by the impulse to accomplish what I had always wanted to do....
[After some false starts, Petrarch finally achieves his goal and
arrives at the top of Mount Ventoux.]
I was glad of the progress I had made but I wept over my imperfection
and was grieved by the fickleness of all that men do In this manner
I seemed to have somehow forgotten the place I had come to and why,
until I was warned to throw off such sorrows, for which another place
would be appropriate. I had better look around and see what I had
intended to see in coming here. The time to leave was approaching,
they said…. Like a man aroused from sleep, I turned back and
looked toward the west... One could see most distinctly the mountains
of the province of Lyons to the right and, to the left, the sea near
Marseilles as well as the waves that break against Aigues-Mortes….The
Rhóne River was directly under our eyes.
I admired every detail, now relishing earthly enjoyment, now lifting up my mind to spheres after the example of my body, and I thought it fit to look in the volume of Augustine’s Confessions which I owe to your loving kindness and preserve carefully, keeping it always in my hands, in remembrance of the author as well as the donor.... I opened it with the intention of reading whatever might occur to me first…. I happened to hit upon the tenth book of the work.... Where I fixed my eyes first, it was written: “And men go to admire the high mountains, the vast floods of the sea, the huge streams of the rivers, the circumference of the ocean, and the revolutions of the stars—and desert themselves.” I was stunned, I confess. I bade my brother [who had accompanied him], who wanted to hear more, not to molest me, and closed the book, angry with myself that I still admired earthly things. Long since I ought to have learned, even from, pagan philosophers, that “nothing is admirable besides the soul; compared to its greatness nothing is great."
I was completely satisfied with what I had seen of the mountain and
tuned my inner eye toward myself. From this hour nobody heard me say
a word until we arrived at the bottom These words occupied me sufficiently.
I could not imagine that this had happened to me by chance. I was
convinced that whatever I had read there was said to me and to nobody
else. I remembered that Augustine once suspected the same regarding
himself, when, while he was reading the Apostolic Epistles, the first
passage that occurred to him was, as he himself relates: “Not
in banqueting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not
in strife and envying; but put you on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make
no provision for the flesh to fulfill you lusts.”
Map Assignment: On the two blank maps of the European continent locate (draw in, if necessary) the following features:
| 1492: Cities: Florence; Granada (Spain); Paris; Prague; Vienna; Amsterdam Boundaries: Holy Roman Empire; Ottoman Empire; Papal States Geography: Rhine river; Pyrenees; Alps |
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| 2003:
Cities: Rome; Madrid; London; Warsaw; Istanbul; Bordeaux Boundaries: Hungary; Belgium, Germany Geography: Danube river; Elbe river; Seine river |
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