assignment for this week
Exercise 5.3
Below are slightly extended versions of the two extracts about Elizabeth I that you
met in the exercises for Chapter 2. I have numbered the ranking clauses (but not the
embedded clauses). Analyse the transitivity choices, and then consider what the
analysis tells us about the diff erent ways in which the texts construe ‘doing history
Extract 1 (from a website aimed at young readers)
(1) Elizabeth was the last sovereign of the house of Tudor. (2) She was born at
Greenwich, September 7, 1533. (3) Her childhood was passed in comparative
quietness, (4) and she was educated by people who favoured reformed religion.
(5) In 1554, Elizabeth was confi ned in the Tower by order of Queen Mary. (6)
She narrowly escaped death, (7) because some of the bishops and courtiers advised
Mary (8) to order her execution. (9) After she had passed several months in the
Tower, (10) she was removed to Woodstock (11) and appeased Mary (12) by
professing to be a Roman Catholic.
Extract 2 (from an academic history journal)
(1) The spectre of a feminine succession ended with Mary’s execution, in 1587.
(2) Thereafter, the parameters of debate over kingship shifted in ways that have
obscured the centrality of gender to the genesis of English anti-Catholicism and
thus to early modern English nationalism. (3) But to understand the genesis of
English anti-Catholicism, (4) we must return to the sixteenth century and to the
problem of the two queens. (5) We can begin (6) by exploring the linkage
between gender and religion that fuelled fears of female rule in the early modern
period. (7) Early modern culture defi ned ‘male’ and ‘female’ as polar opposites. (8)
This hierarchical dual classifi cation system categorically diff erentiated between
male and female, (9) privileging men over women as both spiritual and rational
beings in ways that underpinned social order and hierarchy.