SAMPLE PARAGRAPHS

Introductory paragraph:

This paragraph should include your thesis statement, prominently placed (either the first or the last sentence). The rest of the paragraph should make clear what you mean by the thesis (explain technical terms briefly if they are not immediately obvious, give some BRIEF historical background, describe the logical basis for the thesis) and what type of evidence you plan to use to prove your thesis (don't list specific sources unless you relied very heavily on one particular source, but in general indicate whether your paper is based on primary or secondary sources, and whether a particular type of evidence, such as legal documents or poetry or modern statistical studies, played an important role in your analysis).

Example: When the French scholar Abbo of Fleury arrived in England in about 985, he was ill-prepared for the cultural differences that he found, despite previous contacts between his home monastery of Fleury and English monasteries. As revealed in his own writings and the writings of his contemporaries in England and France, the contrast between the two cultures was great. Abbo was continuing a pattern of long-standing contact between Fleury and the monasteries of the tenth-century English monastic revival. His own monastery was an old foundation at the political and economic center of the western Carolingian Empire (by this time the kingdom of France), on the busy upper-reaches of the Loire River. In contrast, the newly founded house of Ramsey lay in the middle of the East Anglian fenlands, its location chosen for its remoteness from English population centers. Although Abbo spoke affectionately of his students at Ramsey, he described his time in England as an exile, and after fewer than two years begged the abbot of Fleury to call him back to France.

Evidentiary paragraph:

This paragraph should present one argument necessary for proving your thesis along with supporting evidence. Summarize or quote accurately and give citations of your sources (whether summarized or quoted). Explain how/why the evidence in this paragraph supports your argument and make clear how the argument supports your overall thesis.

Example: Related to this change in physical environment was a change in diet. English diet was (and remains) quite different from that of France. Although Abbo never wrote about his diet in England, he must have discussed it with his fellow monks at Fleury after his return. In fact, the different diet is one of the few details provided about Abbo's stay in England by his biographer, the southern Frankish monk Aimoinus of Fleury. More than ten years after Abbo's return to France, Aimoinus described the abbot as fat but excused him from any suspicion of gluttony. Abbo's weight-gain came not from eating well but from English cooking, for "in the regions across the sea, the unaccustomed quality of the food of pilgrims and the drinking of fermented beverages (decocta potio) turned his body to fat."(1) Far north of the wine-producing regions of France, the English could offer the visiting scholar only their fattening beer or ale with meals and before the evening reading, though he might be treated to wine on special days.(2) Other dietary changes can be hypothesized from the lists vocabulary exercises of Aelfric Bata. He includes a long list of fish available along England's waterways, including the ubiquitous eel. The Continental staples of oil and wine, however, would have to be imported. A boy in an English monastery might expect to eat bread and butter (rather than oil) or perhaps "dripping, new cheese, or lard," accompanied by meat, vegetables, eggs, fish, cheese, or beans, with ale or water to wash it down. Wine was expensive and would have been reserved for the old and wise.(3) When Abbo attended feasts, such as the gathering at Dunstan's residence, he might expect more courses and fancier but equally caloric fare. Feast food might have included bacon, venison, pork, or beef, as well as milk.(4)

Notes to evidentiary paragraph: (1) Aimoinus, Vita s Abbonis ch.11. (2) Ann Hagen, A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food: Processing and Consumption (revised edition 1998, rpt. Norfolk, England: Anglo-Saxon Books, 2002), pp. 69-70. (3) Aelfric Bata, lfrics Colloquies, ed. G. N. Garmonsway (London: Methuen, 1939), pp. 27, 33, and 46-47, and Hagen, Handbook, p. 71. (4) Hagen, Handbook, pp. 71 and 74.

Both sample paragraphs adapted from "Culture Shock: The Experience of Abbo of Fleury in England" by Elizabeth Dachowski (originally presented at the International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2002).