Unit information: English in Medieval Ireland (Level I Lecture Response) in 2009/10

Unit name	English in Medieval Ireland (Level I Lecture Response)
Unit code	HIST25018
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Professor. Smith
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of History (Historical Studies)
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

This unit examines the causes and consequences of England's intervention in Ireland from 1170 - an intervention that involved not only assertions of constitutional overlordship, but also military conquest and a substantial process of colonisation that transformed Irish political, social and economic life. The response of the native Irish to this transformation, the nature of relations between natives and newcomers, the development of settler society, and the changing character of relations between the English of Ireland and England and its inhabitants are the issues that this Lecture Response Unit will address. Did English settlers become 'more Irish than the Irish themselves'? Did they seek independence from England? By the end of the Middle Ages contemporary opinion in England held that involvement in Ireland had proved an expensive failure and that a new conquest was necessary. How accurate was such an assessment?

Aims:

• To provide a broad grounding in the history of Englands intervention in Ireland from 1170

• To provide a particular perspective from the tutor to which students can react critically and build their own individual views and interpretations.

Intended Learning Outcomes

• wider historical knowledge of the history of Englands intervention in Ireland from 1170

• deeper awareness of how to approach a long term historical analysis

• ability to set individual issues within their longer term historical context

• the ability to analyse and generalise about issues of continuity and change

• ability to select pertinent evidence/data in order to illustrate/demonstrate more general historical points

• ability to derive benefit from and contribute effectively to large group discussion

• ability to identify a particular academic interpretation, evaluate it critically and form an individual viewpoint.

Teaching Information

• Weekly 2-hour interactive lectures

• Tutorial feedback on essay

• Access to tutorial consultation with unit tutor in office hours

Assessment Information

1 x 3000 word essay (50%) and 1 x 2 hour exam (50%)

Reading and References

• Cosgrove (ed.), A New History of Ireland II: Medieval Ireland, 1169-1534 (Oxford, 1987)

• S. Duffy, Ireland in the Middle Ages (London, 1997)

• R. Frame, Colonial Ireland, 1169-1369 (Dublin, 1981)

• J. Lydon, The Lordship of Ireland in the Middle Ages (Dublin, 2003)

• Smith (ed.), Ireland and the English World in the Late Middle Ages (Basingstoke, 2009)