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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        August 2002

        Sodomy in early modern Europe

        by Joseph Bergin, Tom Betteridge, Penny Roberts, Bill Naphy

        This fascinating collection of essays reflects closely the main areas of debate within gay historiography. For the last twenty years scholars have argued over the nature of early modern sodomy, responding in a number of different and contradictory ways. Questions addressed in the book include: was early modern sodomy the same as modern homosexuality? Were there homosexuals in early modern Europe? Did men who had sex with each other in this period regard their behaviour as determining their identity? What was the relationship between the grave sin of sodomy and the homoerotic images that fill Renaissance culture?. The volume includes essays on sodomy in English Protestant history writing, in Calvin's Geneva, in early modern Venice and the trial of sodomy in Germany. ;

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2021

        Mary and Philip

        The marriage of Tudor England and Habsburg Spain

        by Alexander Samson

        Mary I, eldest daughter of Henry VIII, was Queen of England from 1553 until her death in 1558. For much of this time she ruled alongside her husband, King Philip II of Spain, forming a co-monarchy that put England at the heart of early modern Europe. In this book, Alexander Samson presents a bold reassessment of Mary and Philip's reign, rescuing them from the neglect they have suffered at the hands of generations of historians. The co-monarchy of Mary I and Philip II put England at the heart of early modern Europe. This positive reassessment of their joint reign counters a series of parochial, misogynist and anti-Catholic assumptions, correcting the many myths that have grown up around the marriage and explaining the reasons for its persistent marginalisation in the historiography of sixteenth-century England. Using new archival discoveries and original sources, the book argues for Mary as a great Catholic queen, while fleshing out Philip's important contributions as king of England.

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        Literature & Literary Studies
        July 2021

        Old Fortunatus

        By Thomas Dekker

        by David McInnis

        With its fantasy of magical travel and inexhaustible riches, Thomas Dekker's Old Fortunatus is the quintessential early modern journeying play. The adventures of Fortunatus and his sons, aided by a magical purse and wishing-hat, offers the period's most overt celebration of the pleasures of travel, as well as a sustained critique of the dangers of intemperance and prodigality. Written following a period of financial difficulty for Dekker, the play is also notable for its fascination with the symbolic, mercantile and ethical uses of gold. This Revels Plays edition is the first fully annotated, single-volume critical edition of Old Fortunatus. It offers scholarly discussion of the play's performance and textual history, including attention to the German version printed and performed in the early seventeenth century. It provides a long overdue critical reappraisal of this unjustly neglected play.

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        Literature & Literary Studies
        February 2020

        The senses in early modern England, 1558–1660

        by Simon Smith, Jacqueline Watson, Amy Kenny

        Considering a wide range of early modern texts, performances and artworks, the essays in this collection demonstrate how attention to the senses illuminates the literature, art and culture of early modern England. Examining canonical and less familiar literary works alongside early modern texts ranging from medical treatises to conduct manuals via puritan polemic and popular ballads, the collection offers a new view of the senses in early modern England. The volume offers dedicated essays on each of the five senses, each relating works of art to their cultural moments, whilst elsewhere the volume considers the senses collectively in particular cultural contexts. It also pursues the sensory experiences that early modern subjects encountered through the very acts of engaging with texts, performances and artworks. This book will appeal to scholars of early modern literature and culture, to those working in sensory studies, and to anyone interested in the art and life of early modern England.

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        Literature & Literary Studies
        July 2015

        The senses in early modern England, 1558–1660

        by Edited by Simon Smith, Jackie Watson and Amy Kenny

        Considering a wide range of early modern texts, performances and artworks, the essays in this collection demonstrate how attention to the senses illuminates the literature, art and culture of early modern England. Examining canonical and less familiar literary works alongside early modern texts ranging from medical treatises to conduct manuals via puritan polemic and popular ballads, the collection offers a new view of the senses in early modern England. The volume offers dedicated essays on each of the five senses, each relating works of art to their cultural moments, whilst elsewhere the volume considers the senses collectively in particular cultural contexts. It also pursues the sensory experiences that early modern subjects encountered through the very acts of engaging with texts, performances and artworks. This book will appeal to scholars of early modern literature and culture, to those working in sensory studies, and to anyone interested in the art and life of early modern England. ;

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2023

        The supernatural in early modern Scotland

        by Julian Goodare, Martha McGill

        This book is about other worlds and the supernatural beings, from angels to fairies, that inhabited them. It is about divination, prophecy, visions and trances. And it is about the cultural, religious, political and social uses to which people in Scotland put these supernatural themes between 1500 and 1800. The supernatural consistently provided Scots with a way of understanding topics such as the natural environment, physical and emotional wellbeing, political events and visions of past and future. In exploring the early modern supernatural, the book has much to reveal about how men and women in this period thought about, debated and experienced the world around them. Comprising twelve chapters by an international range of scholars, The supernatural in early modern Scotland discusses both popular and elite understandings of the supernatural.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2021

        Religion and life cycles in early modern England

        by Caroline Bowden, Emily Vine, Tessa Whitehouse

        Religion and life cycles in early modern England assembles scholars working in the fields of history, English literature and art history to further our understanding of the intersection between religion and the life course in the period c. 1550-1800. Featuring chapters on Catholic, Protestant and Jewish communities, it encourages cross-confessional comparison between life stages and rites of passage that were of religious significance to all faiths in early modern England. The book considers biological processes such as birth and death, aspects of the social life cycle including schooling, coming of age and marriage and understandings of religious transition points such as spiritual awakenings and conversion. Through this inclusive and interdisciplinary approach, it seeks to show that the life cycle was not something fixed or predetermined and that early modern individuals experienced multiple, overlapping life cycles.

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        History of medicine
        November 2011

        Women's medical work in early modern France

        by Susan Broomhall

        Women have long been crucial to the provision of medical services, both in the treatment of sickness and in maintaining health. In this study, Susan Broomhall situates the practices and perceptions of women's medical work in France in the context of the sixteenth century and its medical evolution and innovations. She argues that early modern understandings of medical practice and authority were highly flexible and subject to change. She furthermore examines how a focus on female practitioners, who cut across most sectors of early modern medical practice, can reveal the multifaceted phenomenon of these negotiations for authority. This new paperback edition of Women's medical work in early modern France skilfully combines detailed research with a clear presentation of the existing literature of women's medical work, making it invaluable to students of gender and medical history.

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        Literature & Literary Studies
        August 2023

        Poison on the early modern English stage

        Plants, paints and potions

        by Lisa Hopkins, Bill Angus

        Many early modern plays use poison, most famously Hamlet, where the murder of Old Hamlet showcases the range of issues poison mobilises. Its orchard setting is one of a number of sinister uses of plants which comment on both the loss of horticultural knowledge resulting from the Dissolution of the Monasteries and also the many new arrivals in English gardens through travel, trade, and attempts at colonisation. The fact that Old Hamlet was asleep reflects unease about soporifics troubling the distinction between sleep and death; pouring poison into the ear smuggles in the contemporary fear of informers; and it is difficult to prove. This book explores poisoning in early modern plays, the legal and epistemological issues it raises, and the cultural work it performs, which includes questions related to race, religion, nationality, gender, and humans' relationship to the environment.

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        Literature & Literary Studies
        February 2015

        Biblical women in early modern literary culture, 1550–1700

        1550–1700

        by Edited by Victoria Brownlee and Laura Gallagher

        At once pervasive and marginal, appealing and repellent, exemplary and atypical, the women of the Bible provoke an assortment of readings across early modern literature. Biblical women in early modern literary culture, 1550-1700 draws attention to the complex ways in which biblical women's narratives could be reimagined for a variety of rhetorical and religious purposes. Considering a confessionally diverse range of writers, working across a variety of genres, this volume reveals how women from the Old and New Testaments exhibit an ideological power that frequently exceeds, both in scope and substance, their associated scriptural records. The essays explore how the Bible's women are fluidly negotiated and diversely redeployed to offer (conflicting) comment on issues including female authority, speech and sexuality, and in discussions of doctrine, confessional politics, exploration and grief. As it explores the rich ideological currency of the Bible's women in early modern culture, this volume demonstrates that the Bible's women are persistently difficult to evade. ;

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2018

        The social world of early modern Westminster

        Abbey, court and community, 1525–1640

        by Peter Lake, J. F. Merritt, Anthony Milton, Jason Peacey, Alexandra Gajda

        Early modern Westminster is familiar as the location of the Royal Court at Whitehall, parliament, the law courts and the emerging West End, yet it has never been studied in its own right. This book is the first study to provide an integrated picture of the town during this crucial period in its history. It reveals the often problematic relations between the diverse groups of people who constituted local society - the Court, the aristocracy, the Abbey, the middling sort and the poor - and the competing visions of Westminster's identity which their presence engendered. Different chapters study the impact of the Reformation and of the building of Whitehall Palace; the problem of poverty and the politics of communal responsibility; the character and significance of the increasing gentry presence in the town; the nature and ideology of local governing elites; the struggles over the emerging townscape; and the changing religious culture of the area, including the problematic role of the post-Reformation Abbey. A comprehensive study of one of the most populous and influential towns in early modern England, this book covers the entire period from the Reformation to the Civil War. It will make fascinating reading for historians of English society, literature and religion in this period, as well as enthusiasts of London's rich history.

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        Literature & Literary Studies
        March 2005

        Early modern women's manuscript poetry

        by Jill Millman, Gillian Wright

        'Early modern women's manuscript poetry' is an anthology of texts by fourteen women poets writing between 1589 and 1706. It is the only currently available anthology of early modern women's writing which focuses exclusively on manuscript material. Authors include Mary Sidney, Lucy Hutchinson and Katherine Philips; central figures in the emerging canon of early modern women writers, but whose work appears in a fresh and very different light in the manuscript context emphasised by this anthology. The volume also includes substantial excerpts from a recently discovered verse paraphrase of Genesis, thought to be by the previously unknown seventeenth-century writer Mary Roper, as well as selections from the unjustly neglected poet, Hester Pulter. The mix of canonical and non-canonical writers makes this book ideal for use on undergraduate and early postgraduate courses, while specialists will be particularly interested in the sophisticated and varied material taken from less familiar sources. ;

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