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.

scholarly journals Teaching Punctuation in Early Modern England

2010 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-49
Author(s):  
Alicia Rodríguez-Álvarez
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Oral Delivery ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Shed Light

Teaching Punctuation in Early Modern England Much has been written on the punctuation practice of late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English writers in order to work out the ultimate function of marks of punctuation. The main point of discussion has almost ever been whether punctuation indicated syntactic relationships or represented speech pauses either to give emphasis in oral delivery or just to be able to breathe. The focus of this paper, however, is the theory rather than the practice, in particular, the set of rules and conventions used by schoolmasters to guide students in their use of stops. Thus, textbooks used at the time to teach reading and writing will constitute our main sources of information to achieve the following aims: (i) to offer a classification of the different marks of punctuation described, (ii) to establish the functions schoolbooks assigned to punctuation marks in general, and (iii) to assess the importance schoolmasters gave to pointing. The results of this study - which follows the works by Ong (1944) and Salmon (1962, 1988) - will contribute to shed light on the ever-lasting debate on the principles guiding Early Modern English punctuation usage.

"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

The Matter of Song in Early Modern England

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine R. Larson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Innovative Methodology ◽  
Central Case

Given the variety and richness of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English “songscape,” it might seem unsurprising to suggest that early modern song needs to be considered as sung. When a reader encounters a song in a sonnet sequence, a romance, and even a masque or a play, however, the tendency is to engage with it as poem rather than as musical performance. The Matter of Song in Early Modern England: Texts in and of the Air opens up the notion of song from a performance-based perspective and considers the implications of reading early modern song not simply as lyric text but as embodied and gendered musical practice. Animating the traces of song preserved in physiological and philosophical commentaries, singing handbooks, poetic treatises, and literary texts ranging from Mary Sidney Herbert’s Psalmes to John Milton’s Comus, the book confronts song’s ephemerality, its lexical and sonic capriciousness, and its airy substance. These features can resist critical analysis but were vital to song’s affective workings in the early modern period. The Matter of Song in Early Modern England demonstrates the need to attend much more closely to the musical dimensions of literary production and circulation in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. It also makes an important and timely contribution to our understanding of women’s engagement with song as writers and as performers. A companion recording of fourteen songs, featuring Larson (soprano) and Lucas Harris (lute), brings the project’s innovative methodology and central case studies to life.

Shakespeare's Representation of Weather, Climate and Environment

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Chiari
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
As You Like It ◽  
Ability To Act

While ecocritical approaches to literary texts receive more and more attention, climate-related issues remain fairly neglected, particularly in the field of Shakespeare studies. This monograph explores the importance of weather and changing skies in early modern England while acknowledging the fact that traditional representations and religious beliefs still fashioned people’s relations to meteorological phenomena. At the same time, a growing number of literati stood against determinism and defended free will, thereby insisting on man’s ability to act upon celestial forces. Yet, in doing so, they began to give precedence to a counter-intuitive approach to Nature. Sophie Chiari argues that Shakespeare reconciles the scholarly views of his time with more popular ideas rooted in superstition and that he promotes a sensitive, pragmatic understanding of climatic events. She pays particular attention to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Othello, King Lear, Anthony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest. Taking into account the influence of classical thought, each of the book’s seven chapters emphasises specific issues (e.g. cataclysmic disorders, the dog days’ influence, freezing temperatures, threatening storms) and considers the way climatic events were presented on stage and how they came to shape the production and reception of Shakespeare’s drama.

Johannine Dualism, Antinomianism, and Early Modern English Radical Dissent

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Cefalu
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Fourth Gospel ◽  
Richard Crashaw ◽  
Broad Group ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Henry Vaughan

Johannine theology exerts a wide influence on a broad group of antinomian writers and mid-seventeenth-century English separatists, including the Familists, Diggers, Quakers, and a range of English mystics and spiritual enthusiasts. This chapter looks closely at the embrace of the most dualistic and eschatological passages of the Fourth Gospel and First Epistle by the English radical tradition. After an outline of the distinctive qualities of this Johannine political theology, the chapter turns to the antinomian influence on two radically different English poets, Richard Crashaw and Henry Vaughan. If Crashaw shows antinomian leanings despite his embrace of Laudian fundamentals, Vaughan emerges as something of an anti-enthusiast in his more politically topical poems of Silex Scintillans.

Afterword

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Brownlee
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
Departure Point ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Relationship

The recent upturn in biblically based films in Anglophone cinema is the departure point for this Afterword reflecting on the Bible’s impact on popular entertainment and literature in early modern England. Providing a survey of the book’s themes, and drawing together the central arguments, the discussion reminds that literary writers not only read and used the Bible in different ways to different ends, but also imbibed and scrutinized dominant interpretative principles and practices in their work. With this in mind, the Afterword outlines the need for further research into the relationship between biblical readings and literary writings in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.

scholarly journals England and the Catholic Reformation: The Peripheries Strike Back

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-285
Author(s):  
James E. Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Position Paper ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Catholic Reformation ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Vital Part ◽  
Early Modern English

AbstractAlthough the Protestant Reformation has traditionally been the focus of research on early modern England, the last two decades have witnessed a rapid increase in scholarship on the experience of the country’s Catholics. Questions surrounding the implementation of the Catholic Reformation in England have been central since the topic’s inception as a subject of academic interest, and the field has more recently captured the attention of, amongst others, literary scholars, musicologists and those working on visual and material culture. This article is a position paper that argues early modern English Catholicism, though not doing away with all continuities from before the country’s definitive break with Rome, was fully engaged with the global Catholic Reformation, both being influenced by it, but also impacting its progression. Whether through reading and writing, or more physical expressions of mission and reform, English Catholicism was a vital part of the wider Catholic Reformation.

Stancetaking in seventeenth-century prefaces on obstetrics

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Alonso Almeida ◽  
Margarita Mele-Marrero
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Power Relationship ◽  
Epistemic Stance ◽  
Authorial Identity ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The Relationship

This paper deals with authorial stance in prefatory material of Early Modern English manuals on women’s diseases. Publications on this field from between 1612 and 1699 constitute our corpus of study. Original digitalised texts have been analysed manually to identify and detect structures concerning authorial identity and stance, according to the model developed by Marín-Arrese (2009). This model for the identification of effective and epistemic stance strategies enables us to describe both the relationship between the authors and their texts and, more specifically, the power relationship between the writers and their audience. One of the most important conclusions of this study concerns the strategic use of stance markers to enhance the quality of these books and make them appropriate for a wide variety of readers.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Erin Webster
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Retinal Image ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Optical Devices ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Optical Technology ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Subject

This chapter introduces the study by providing an overview of the epistemological, ethical, social, and political issues surrounding the subject of technologically mediated vision in early modern England. It lays out the key optical developments of the period, including the invention of the telescope and the microscope, and provides a brief synopsis of Johannes Kepler’s theory of the retinal image, which over the course of the seventeenth century gradually came to replace older, species-based models of vision. This context having been established, the introduction describes the general contours of the debate surrounding the efficacy and ethics of optical technology in the seventeenth century and identifies and introduces the major works to be discussed in subsequent chapters. It closes with an explanation of the study’s methodological approach, which is to read the texts it includes not only as being about optical devices but also as acting as optical devices—literary lenses that can be used to reveal the hidden motivations, assumptions, and desires present within their words.

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