Choose one of the primary source documents you were assigned to read in Lualdi, Sources of the Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures, V. II (chapters 15-29). After reading it carefully, write a 3- or 4-page essay that summarizes its main ideas and analyzes it, using the questions below to help you in developingyour analysis. For additional guidance, check Lualdi’s introduction (“Working with Historical Sources”). Use the source: A call for women’s inclusion: olympe de gouges, declaration of the rights of woman (1791).
What kind of document is this? A personal letter, a speech, a memoir, or report of some kind? When was it written? Consider why this matters to an historian or anyone trying to understand the past. Also, identify your document at the start of your essay by giving readers its full title and the name of its author (if available).
Who is the author? Even in the case of an anonymous source, you can learn something about the author’s identity based on clues such as the ideas or religious beliefs expressed within the text. What might have been the reason for writing this?
* Who is the main audience? In other words, to whom was this document directed? For what apparent purpose? How is this purpose reflected in the author’s style or tone?
What is the document actually saying? Identify its main ideas along with its overall message or argument. Summarize this message or argument for your reader, preferably early in the essay.
* Is it persuasive? Explain why (or why not). Be specific about what makes it a convincing or credible source of information—or, not–for an historian. You may comment on matters of style, tone and language, as needed.
What can we, as historians, learn from this document? What does it reveal about a particular part of the past you have studied? Does it speak in any way to concerns of the present? Explain how, using what you have learned from course reading & lectures.
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