WOMEN IN THE ANNALS OF THE FOUR MASTERS

Class notes for teachers

Topic

An introduction to the representation of women in the Irish annals.

Description

A question and answer exercise on early Irish culture using Celt: Corpus of Electronic Texts on the Internet.

Celt is an online resource which aims to bring the wealth of Irish literary and historical documents, both contemporary and historical, to the greatest possible range of readers, researchers, scholars, teachers, students, and the general public. The texts can be searched, read on-screen, downloaded for later use, or printed out, subject to acknowledgement of the source.

Teachers are strongly recommended to try out this exercise before attempting it in class.

Objectives

that students may:

• discover how to access historical sources through the Internet
• become acquainted with the Annals of the Four Masters and other important sources for Irish history
• gain an insight into the presentation of early Irish society in the annals
• consider selected representations of women in the Annals of the Four Masters
• consider some of the problems associated with interpreting the evidence of the annals
• explore the very old through the very new
• practise searching for online material
• practise transferring online material to a computer file
• practise transferring online material both directly and through a word processing programme to the printed page
• practise the presentation of such material.

Resources

Computers linked to the Internet. One computer for each student or one computer for each group.

Web browser to access the Internet.

Word processing software.

Printer linked to computer.

Writing materials.

Worksheet: Researching the Annals of the Four Masterscan be accessed and downloaded at the end of this section