First post! :)
So, I'm currently writing a 10,000 word undergrad dissertation for my history degree. The aim of my dissertation is to analyze medieval attitudes to nature and the natural environment. In order to do this, I am using around 20 different pieces of medieval travel writing (Marco Polo, Mandeville...). I am analyzing the text to see what the authors thought about nature- beautiful, scary, worthless? Given that this is a partly subjective exercise, do you have any suggestions for the methodology I might approach? I would like to compare and get the most from the pieces, but because this hasn't been done before, I'm not quite sure how to go about it.
Any advice would be much appreciated!
The biggest suggestion that I have is that you limit yourself. I was really resistant to this when I was writing my MA thesis, and decided to cover way too many sources. To really work with twenty separate sources, you need to not only read and analyze all of them, but also read secondary literature on all of the. This will be in addition to the other secondary reading you'll have to do to ground yourself in your broader topics (there's a corpus of scholarship both on medieval ideas about nature and travel literature). And then you have to synthesize all of that reading and analysis into a coherent argument which fits under your limit (10,000 words is not very long).
Your best bet is to choose a smaller set of sources that you want to focus on, and then start out on some contextual reading so that you can get an idea of what exactly you want to argue (ie, what your thesis is).
Caveat: be sure to talk to your professor(s) early and often. They may want you to start from the primary sources and work out to the secondary, or start from the scholarship and then read your sources. They may want you to use different sources. They'll have loads of suggestions for what you should be reading. Don't be shy, go visit their office hours, and you'll be happier with your experience.