Reading.

Here is a brief extract from Jordanova's History in Practice, it should prove useful to you in considering the 'temporal scope' of your interpretations.

DIVIDING UP THE PAST

There are a number of criteria according to which the past can be divided up, not just to produce manageable chunks but to organise our thoughts about it, to offer readings and accounts of it. In effect we are talking about a range of taxonomic systems, which overlap, and can be used in a variety of ways. .... Common divisions are according to rulers or dynasties, around key events or individuals, descriptively by epoch, century, decade or millennium, in terms of the type of government, and according to perceived cultural styles, moods and patterns.

Rulers and dynasties are among the most obvious and commonly used forms of division, reflecting long traditions of scholarship that place leadership in government as a key phenomenon and accord primacy to the political order. Obvious examples include, Tudor, Georgian, and Victorian (England); Bourbon and Napoleonic (France); Carolingian (Holy Roman Empire); Wilhelmine (Germany). Thus a ruler or a family of rulers can embody a period; it is as if the one who heads the state holds together disparate historical phenomena in an extension of that role. .... Related notions, such as 'Saxon' or 'Norman' when applied to periods carry similar connotations, and, in addition, by virtue of their association with areas such as architecture, convey the idea that a whole culture is involved since, in one of their meanings, they describe apolitical dominance rooted in ethnicity. ....

... we should note how many of the related adjectives (Anglo-Saxon, Louis Quinze, Napoleonic, Victorian) are also terms of style. This is especially obvious in relation to houses, furniture, jewellery and clothing. While we associate 'style' with art, music, fashion and other cultural products, it is in fact an important, if largely umecognised, part of his- torical practice. Style can mean what is characteristic of a given artist, that is of an individual, but it is also used, and has been since the eighteenth cen tury, to sum up a period and to differentiate between periods -rococo and neo-classical, for example. Style and periodisation are closely related, jointly shaping the historical imagination. A particularly telling instance is 'Victorian', which is now applied beyond the boundaries of Britain or its empire to suggest visual styles of the second half of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, as is evident in the phrase 'Victorian values', it suggests a style of thinking and responding to the world.