Manuscript Matters

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lara M. Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Religious Poetry ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Literary Responses ◽  
Early Readers

Manuscript Matters illuminates responses to some of John Donne’s most elusive texts by his contemporary audiences. Since examples of seventeenth-century literary criticism prove somewhat rare and frequently ambiguous, this book emphasizes a critical framework rarely used for exhibiting early readers’ exegeses of literary texts: the complete manuscripts containing them. Many literary manuscripts that include poems by Donne and his contemporaries were compiled during their lifetimes, often by members of their circles. For this reason, and because various early modern poems and prose works satirize topical events and prominent figures in highly coded language, attempting to understand early literary interpretations proves challenging but highly valuable. Compilers, scribes, owners, and other readers—men and women who shared in Donne’s political, religious, and social contexts—offer clues to their literary responses within a range of features related to the construction and subsequent use of the manuscripts. This study’s findings call us to investigate more extensively and systematically how certain early manuscripts were constructed through analysis of such features as scripts, titles, sequence of contents, ascriptions, and variant diction. While such studies can throw light on many early modern texts, exploring artifacts containing Donne’s works proves particularly useful because more of his poetry circulated in manuscript than did that of any other early modern poet. Manuscript Matters engages Donne’s satiric, lyric, and religious poetry, as well as his prose paradoxes and problems—refocusing modern interpretation through an early modern lens.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lara M. Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Critical Inquiry ◽  
Central Thesis ◽  
Early Readers

The conclusion reiterates the book’s central thesis: that through seeking material clues within specific manuscript witnesses to texts written by Donne and his contemporaries, we can illuminate the literary interpretations of early readers who shared in these authors’ political, religious, and social contexts. Early modern manuscript compilers, scribes, and owners were all readers whose responses to literary texts can be discerned in certain cases. In addition, careful manuscript investigation can illuminate early readers’ perspectives on contemporary authors, topics, events, and prominent figures. The conclusion recalls the arguments and findings in each chapter and proffers additional avenues for critical inquiry.

Orthodox Radicals

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Bingham
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Infant Baptism ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Baptist Identity ◽  
Ongoing Project

Orthodox Radicals explores the origins and identity of Baptists during the English Revolution (1640–1660), arguing that mid-seventeenth century Baptists did not, in fact, understand themselves to be part of a larger, all-encompassing “Baptist” movement. Contrary to both the explicit statements of many historians and the tacit suggestion embedded in the very use of “Baptist” as an overarching historical category, the early modern men and women who rejected infant baptism would not have initially understood that single theological move as being in itself constitutive of a new group identity. Rather, the rejection of infant baptism was but one of a number of doctrinal revisions then taking place among English puritans eager to further their ongoing project of godly reformation. Orthodox Radicals thus complicates our understanding of Baptist identity and addresses broader themes including early modern religious toleration, the mechanisms by which early modern groups defined and defended themselves, and the perennial problem of historical anachronism. By combining a provocative reinterpretation Baptist identity with close readings of key theological and political texts, Orthodox Radicals offers the most original and stimulating analysis of mid-seventeenth century Baptists in decades.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Bingham
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Self ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
The World ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
To Come ◽  
Considerable Body

Ushering the reader into both the world of early modern radical religion and the considerable body of scholarly literature devoted to its study, the introduction offers a précis of what is to come and a backward glance to explain how the proposed journey contributes to ongoing scholarly conversations. After orienting readers to the basic methodological boundaries within which the book will operate and briefly situating the book within the wider historiography, the introduction adumbrates the shape of the work as a whole and encapsulates its central argument. The introduction contends that the mid-seventeenth-century men and women often described as “Particular Baptists” would not have readily understood themselves as such. This tension between the self-identity of the early modern actors and the identity imposed upon them by future scholars has significant implications for how we understand both radical religion during the English Revolution and the period more broadly.

Whose Saint Crispins Day Is It?: Shoemaking, Holiday Making, and the Politics of Memory in Early Modern England

2001 ◽  
Vol 54 (4-Part2) ◽  
pp. 1467-1494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison A. Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
Henry V ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
English Politics

This article demonstrates an early modern association between the trade of shoemaking and the act of altering the festal calendar. It traces this link through a series of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literary texts including Thomas Deloney's Gentle Craft, Thomas Dekker's Shoemaker's Holiday, and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and — most notably — Henry V. The article argues that the depictions of cobblers making holidays resonated with the early modern English politics of ritual observance, and its concluding discussion of the Saint Crispin's Day speech in Henry V shows how the play imagines king and cobblers vying for control of England's commemorative practice.

Early Modern Écologies

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
French Literature ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
The United States ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Environmental Humanities ◽  
Human Relationship ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Opening Up

Early Modern Écologies is the first collective volume to offer perspectives on the relationship between contemporary ecological thought and early modern French literature. If Descartes spoke of humans as being ‘masters and possessors of Nature’ in the seventeenth century, the writers taken up in this volume arguably demonstrated a more complex and urgent understanding of the human relationship to our shared planet. Opening up a rich archive of literary and non-literary texts produced by Montaigne and his contemporaries, this volume foregrounds not how ecocriticism renews our understanding of a literary corpus, but rather how that corpus causes us to re-think or to nuance contemporary eco-theory. The sparsely bilingual title (an acute accent on écologies) denotes the primary task at hand: to pluralize (i.e. de-Anglophone-ize) the Environmental Humanities. Featuring established and emerging scholars from Europe and the United States, Early Modern Écologies opens up new dialogues between ecotheorists such as Timothy Morton, Gilles Deleuze, and Bruno Latour and Montaigne, Ronsard, Du Bartas, and Olivier de Serres.

Speech Representation in the History of English

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Speech Event ◽  
Speech Representation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Modern

This volume explores the speech representation of the past, comprising in-depth analyses of how speakers and writers mark, structure, and discuss a previous speech event or fictional speech in the history of English. Focusing on the Early Modern English and the Late Modern English periods, the chapters are concerned with topics such as parentheses as markers of represented speech, the development of BE like as a reporting expression, the gradual formation of free indirect speech reporting, and the interpersonal functions of represented speech. Various social contexts and genres are covered, including witness depositions, literary texts, letters, histories, and the spoken language of the recent past. The chapters draw on historical sociolinguistics, historical pragmatics, and corpus linguistics in showing a wide array of approaches to the study of speech representation in the history of English.

Gender and emotions in the visual and intellectual imagination

2018 ◽  
pp. 178-220
Author(s):  
Laura Kounine
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Profile Changes ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Large Groups

This chapter examines representations of the witch in the visual and intellectual imagination. Early sixteenth-century images show witches as female and eroticized. Yet by the seventeenth century, these ‘typical’ representations break down, and visual depictions include large groups of men and women. As the gendered profile changes, so do the emotions depicted: from female lust to collective debauchery, from envy to fear. We witness the same ambiguity in depictions of the witch in early modern intellectual thought. Focusing on Nicolas Remy’s Daemonolatria (1595), this chapter shows that intellectual thought could conceptualize both male and female witches, which challenges the idea that witches were women, because of their heightened emotions and their increased vulnerability to the Devil’s temptations. Instead, witchcraft could be understood through the lens of a violent Devil, who, driven by jealousy and anger, subjugated both men and women through force.

"Feminist Consciousness" and "Wicked Witches": Recent Studies on Women in Early Modern EuropeAn Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England. Susan Dwyer AmussenThe Invention of Renaissance Woman: The Challenge of Female Independence in the Literature and Thought of Italy and England. Pamela Joseph BensonThe Evolution of Women's Asylums since 1500: From Refuges for Ex-Prostitutes to Shelters for Battered Women. Sherrill CohenThe Patriarch's Wife: Literary Evidence and the History of the Family. Margaret J. M. EzellPerforming Motherhood: The Sévigné Correspondence. Michèle Longino FarrellWomen in Seventeenth-Century France. Wendy GibsonLewd Women and Wicked Witches: A Study of the Dynamics of Male Domination. Marianne HesterVirtue of Necessity: English Women's Writing, 1649-1688. Elaine HobbyThe First English Actresses: Women and Drama, 1660-1700. Elizabeth HoweWomen in Power in Early Modern Drama. Theodora A. JankowskiThe Currency of Eros: Women's Love Lyric in Europe, 1540-1620. Ann Rosalind JonesRenaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models. Constance JordanWomen of the Renaissance. Margaret L. KingThe Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy. Gerda LernerWriting Women in Jacobean England. Barbara Kiefer LewalskiVisionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England. Phyllis MackThe Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg. Lyndal RoperDisorderly Women and Female Power in the Street Literature of Early Modern England and Germany. Joy Wiltenburg

Signs ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-175
Author(s):  
Barbara Becker-Cantarino
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Battered Women ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Feminist Consciousness ◽  
History Of ◽  
Street Literature ◽  
Love Lyric

scholarly journals Hungry women: sin and rebellion through food and music in the early modern era

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 101-13
Author(s):  
Gioia Filocamo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
External World ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Male Control ◽  
Female Composer ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

Longing for food has always had different implications for men and women: associated with power and strength for men, it tends to have a worrying proximity to sexual pleasure for women. Showing an interesting parallelism throughout the Cinquecento, Italian humanists and teachers insisted on forbidding women music and gluttony. Food and music were both considered dangerous stimulants for the female senses, and every woman was encouraged to consider herself as a kind of food to be offered to the only human beings authorized to feel and satisfy desires: men and babies. Women could properly express themselves only inside monastic circles: the most prolific female composer of the seventeenth century was a nun, as was the first woman who wrote down recipes. Elaborate music and food became the means to maintain a lively relationship with the external world. Moreover, nuns also escaped male control by using the opposite system of affirming themselves through fasting and mortifying the flesh.

Interpreting Manuscript Contexts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lara M. Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Textual Studies ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Manuscript Culture ◽  
Central Thesis ◽  
Early Readers ◽  
Manuscript Study

Chapter 1 introduces and explores the book’s central thesis through considering practices by Donne’s early readers, placing this study into recent critical conversations on Donne and manuscript culture, and establishing its contribution to such conversations. In addition to adding several discrete examples of manuscript investigations that suggest early interpretive responses to Donne’s texts, this chapter advances a methodological approach for examining literary works within original artifacts: it delineates manuscript elements to investigate in order to uncover clues regarding early modern literary interpretations. These components include provenance, papers and how they were constructed into books, scribes, marginalia, titles, ascriptions, paratexts, and contents and their sequences. Because one cannot anticipate which elements will prove most informative for any given manuscript, all components require attention. This pragmatic approach to manuscript study encourages scholars to embark on explorations traditionally relegated to bibliography and textual studies that actually prove essential to literary criticism.

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