Printed Musical Propaganda in Early Modern England

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Arthur Mann
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Broadside Ballads ◽  
Musical Propaganda ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
The Church

Printed Musical Propaganda in Early Modern England exposes a relationship between music and propaganda that crossed generations and genres, revealing how consistently music, in theory and practice, was used as propaganda in a variety of printed genres that included or discussed music from the English Civil Wars through the reign of William and Mary. These bawdy broadside ballads, pamphlets paid for by Parliament, sermons advertising the Church of England’s love of music, catch-all music collections, music treatises addressed to monarchs, and masque and opera texts, when connected in a contextual mosaic, reveal a new picture of not just individual propaganda pieces, but multi-work propaganda campaigns with contributions that cross social boundaries. Musicians, Royalists, Parliamentarians, government officials, propagandists, clergymen, academics, and music printers worked together setting musical traps to catch the hearts and minds of their audiences and readers. Printed Musical Propaganda proves that the influential power of music was not merely an academic matter for the early modern English, but rather a practical benefit that many sought to exploit for their own gain.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 217-222
Author(s):  
Joseph Arthur Mann
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Moral Instruction ◽  
Broadside Ballads ◽  
Musical Propaganda

The conclusion provides a broad retrospective on the arguments presented and defended throughout the book. In addition, it also offers avenues of future research on the topic of musical propaganda in early modern England. For example, it suggests the presence of musical propaganda campaigns presenting moral instruction to individuals during the Elizabethan era, especially thorough broadside ballads. It also suggests a propaganda campaign prosecuted through the musical Birthday and New Year’s Day odes for William and Mary during their reign.

Perfect War: Alberico Gentili on the Use of Force and the Early Modern Law of Nations

Grotiana ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-281
Author(s):  
Valentina Vadi
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
International Law ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Dispute Settlement Mechanism ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Settlement Mechanism

Abstract Gentili’s conceptualization of war as a conflict between states attempted to limit the legitimacy of war to external wars only, thus precluding the legitimacy of civil wars. It reflected both the emergence of sovereign states and the vision of international law as a law among polities rather than individuals. The conceptualization of war as a dispute settlement mechanism among polities rather than a punishment for breach of the law of nations and the idea of the bilateral justice of war humanized the conduct of warfare and the content of peace treaties. The idea of perfect war excluded brigandage, piracy, and civil wars from its purview. Some scholars have suggested that perfect war had a dark side, legitimizing imperial expansion. Others have cautioned that Gentili explicitly opposed imperial expansion rather adopting anti-imperialist stances. This article suggests that these ambivalent readings of the Gentilian oeuvre reflect the ambivalence of the early modern law of nations. Under the early modern law of nations, aggression for the sake of empire was clearly unjust; nonetheless, imperial expansion took place. Whereas ‘a law which many transgress[ed] [wa]s nonetheless a law’, there was a wide divide between theory and practice.1

INTOXICANTS AND SOCIETY IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 631-657 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHIL WITHINGTON
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Civilizing Process ◽  
The Poor

ABSTRACTThe article considers the rapid increase in the English market for alcohol and tobacco in the 1620s and the set of concurrent influences shaping their consumption. It suggests that intoxicants were not merely a source of solace for ‘the poor’ or the lubricant of traditional community, as historians often imply. Rather, the growth in the market for beer, wine, and tobacco was driven by those affluent social groups regarded as the legitimate governors of the English commonwealth. For men of a certain disposition and means, the consumption of intoxicants became a legitimate – indeed valorized and artful – aspect of their social identity: an identity encapsulated by the Renaissance concept of ‘wit’. These new styles of drinking were also implicated in the proliferation (in theory and practice) of ‘societies’ and ‘companies’, by which contemporaries meant voluntary and purposeful association. These arguments are made by unpacking the economic, social, and cultural contexts informing the humorous dialogue Wine, beere, ale and tobacco. Contending for superiority. What follows demonstrates that the ostensibly frivolous subject of male drinking casts new light on the nature of early modern social change, in particular the nature of the ‘civilizing process’.

‘Love ye therefore the strangers’: immigration and the criminal law in early modern England

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW LOCKWOOD
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Comprehensive Examination ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTThis article offers a comprehensive examination of the relationship between foreign residents and the criminal law in early modern England, as well as an investigation of trials ‘de medietate lingue’, trials with half-English and half-foreign juries, in theory and practice. Because England witnessed both a series of foreign migrations and a series of geo-political crises in the years between 1674 and 1750, the article charts patterns of foreign prosecutions across the period in order to place them in their proper historical context. The article concludes that the protections offered by English law to foreign residents were real and significant and that these protections were especially important at points of geo-political stress.

Episcopal Tombs in Early Modern England

2004 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 654-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER SHERLOCK
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

The Reformation simultaneously transformed the identity and role of bishops in the Church of England, and the function of monuments to the dead. This article considers the extent to which tombs of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century bishops represented a set of episcopal ideals distinct from those conveyed by the monuments of earlier bishops on the one hand and contemporary laity and clergy on the other. It argues that in death bishops were increasingly undifferentiated from other groups such as the gentry in the dress, posture, location and inscriptions of their monuments. As a result of the inherent tension between tradition and reform which surrounded both bishops and tombs, episcopal monuments were unsuccessful as a means of enhancing the status or preserving the memory and teachings of their subjects in the wake of the Reformation.

The Shrine of St. Winefride and Social Control in Early Modern England and Wales

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19
Author(s):  
Matthias Bryson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Alternative Concept ◽  
The Church

In 1534, Henry VIII declared himself the supreme head of the Church of England. In the years that followed, his advisors carried out an agenda to reform the Church. In 1536, the Crown condemned pilgrimages and the veneration of saints’ shrines and relics. By the end of the seventeenth century, nearly every shrine in England and Wales had been destroyed or fell into disuse except for St. Winefride’s shrine in Holywell, Wales. The shrine has continued to be a pilgrimage destination to the present day without disruption. Contemporary scholars have credited the shrine’s survival to its connections with the Tudor and Stuart regimes, to the successful negotiation for its shared use as both a sacred and secular space, and to the missionary efforts of the Jesuits. Historians have yet to conduct a detailed study of St. Winefride’s role in maintaining social order in recusant communities. This article argues that the Jesuits and pilgrims at St. Winefride’s shrine cooperated to create an alternative concept of social order to the legal and customary orders of Protestant society.

Piety and Poisoning in Restoration Plymouth

2006 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 261-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Source ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
True Crime ◽  
Cheap Print ◽  
Convicted Felons ◽  
The Church

Can we identify a pre-eminent physical location for the encounter between elite and popular religious mentalities in seventeenth-century England? A once fashionable and almost typological identification of ‘elite’ with the Church, and ‘popular’ with the alehouse, is now qualified or rejected by many historians. But there has been growing scholarly interest in a third, less salubrious, locale: the prison. Here, throughout the century and beyond, convicted felons of usually low social status found themselves the objects of concern and attention from educated ministers, whose declared purpose was to bring them to full and public repentance for their crimes. The transcript of this process is to be found in a particular literary source: the murder pamphlet, at least 350 of which were published in England between 1573 and 1700. The last two decades have witnessed a mini-explosion of murder-pamphlet studies, as historians and literary scholars alike have become aware of the potential of ‘cheap print’ for addressing a range of questions about the culture and politics of early modern England. The social historian James Sharpe has led the way here, in an influential article characterizing penitent declarations from the scaffold in Foucauldian terms, as internalizations of obedience to the state. In a series of studies, Peter Lake has argued that the sensationalist accounts of ‘true crime’ which were the pamphlets’ stock-in-trade also allowed space for the doctrines of providence and predestination, providing Protestant authors with an entry point into the mental world of the people.

scholarly journals Reading alchemically: guides to ‘philosophical’ practice in early modern England

BJHS Themes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 57-74
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Rampling
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Actual Practice ◽  
Philosophical Practice ◽  
Late Fifteenth

AbstractDozens of early modern treatises claim to offer straightforward instructions on the theory and practice of alchemy, including all the steps necessary to produce the philosophers’ stone and a range of medicinal elixirs. Yet the resulting works often seem to obfuscate more than they explain: omitting vital information, disguising ingredients and practices behind cover names, and describing outcomes that seem, to modern eyes, impossible. Were such ‘instruction manuals’ ever intended to offer guides for actual practice, or did they serve other ends – from attracting patrons to persuading sceptics of the truth of alchemy? Drawing upon alchemical dialogues written, compiled and annotated by English alchemists in the late fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, I argue that these works of ‘philosophical’ alchemy could indeed serve as technical manuals, although not always of the kind we might expect. Such writings offer advice not only on practical techniques, but also on the process of reading alchemically: guiding readers through the exegetical minefield of alchemical writing, in order both to extract meaningful chemical recipes from obscure texts, and to craft the practitioner's own persona as an alchemical philosopher.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Joseph Arthur Mann
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Musical Genres ◽  
Musical Propaganda

The introduction discusses the historiography of early modern England, the history of printing and censorship in that period, and the characteristics of the various musical genres used during that period as vehicles for propaganda. It shows that individuals across the social spectrum could access musical propaganda. It also shows that government censorship had a significant impact on print output. Finally, it provides an overview of the book’s content and exposes the author’s perspective on determining the propaganda designation of individual works.

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