Carefully read and follow the Guidelines for Preparing Essays.
If you choose Option A, you will write two essays, each 1500 words in length and each worth 25% of your final grade. Do not write more than 1500 words.
First Essay: Your first essay is due in class on 10 July. Choose one of the following two topics:
1. Why did Karlstadt, Emser, and Eck argue about religious images? In other words, what fueled their controversy: a simple disagreement about the legitimacy of images or a problem more fundamental than honouring or removing images? If the latter, what was the more fundamental problem? Base your answer on your reading of A Reformation Debate.
2. In your opinion, who won the debate on religious images…or was there a winner? Consider the arguments of both the Protestant and Catholic standpoints. Was one argument more persuasive than the other? Base your answer on your reading of A Reformation Debate. Thus, for the purpose of your essay, Karlstadt will represent Protestantism and Emser and Eck will represent Catholicism.
Second Essay: Your second essay is due at 12:00 on 31 July. If I add any questions to the four listed below, I will let you know in class on 10 July. Alternatively, you can check this page again before 10 July.
1. How effective, in your opinion, were the visual images produced by Scribner in achieving the goals of Lutheran propaganda? Base your answer not only on the images but also on their analysis in For the Sake of Simple Folk.
Obviously, you cannot refer to all the images, but you can choose several representatives of important themes in the visual propaganda. In answering this essay question, you must of course identify the goals of propaganda as Scribner does. You can consider this question as an evaluation of Scribner's book.
2. To what extent do the decisions of town councils and iconoclasm of the common folk of Zürich, Strassburg, and Basel correspond to Karlstadt's critique of images? Base your answer on your reading of A Reformation Debate and Voracious Idols and Violent Hands.
3. Where can we most persuasively locate the social origins of iconoclasm: in the common people or in political and religious elites? Base your answer on your reading of Voracious Idols and Violent Hands and of Moger's article, "Pamphlets, Preaching and Politics."
4. Read the following assessment of Voracious Idols and Violent Hands:
"Lee Wandel aims at returning 'to ordinary people thier agency in the process of reform' (p. 3) and at recovering the theological content of their acts of iconoclasm. Naturally, she wishes to 'contribute at least a partial answer to the question, What was at stake for them in [the?] Reformation?' (p. 25). To her credit, Wandel concentrates largely on the 'ordinary people' of Zürich, Strassburg, and Basel, although we tend to hear the voices of the political decision makers of these cities more clearly than their iconoclastic subjects. Perhaps that is why Wandel does not manage to offer a decisive and convincing analysis of what was at stake for 'ordinary' iconoclasts. She explicitly addresses this very important theme only in the conclusion (pp. 190-98), thereby relegating a primary purpose of her book to the status of an afterthought. The central chapters of the book pay scant attention to the theological motives and aims of the iconoclasts, to what was at stake for the early and 'ordinary' advocates of Protestantism."
Do you agree with this assessment? Why or why not? Base your answer on a close reading of Wandel's book.
This page was revised on 2 July 2003
and has been visited
|
|