Christina H. Lee
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781784991203
- eISBN:
- 9781526104021
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784991203.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This book explores the Spanish elite’s fixation on social and racial “passing” and “passers” as represented in a wide range of texts produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It examines ...
More
This book explores the Spanish elite’s fixation on social and racial “passing” and “passers” as represented in a wide range of texts produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It examines literary and non-literary works that express the dominant Spaniards’ anxiety that socially mobile New Christians could impersonate and pass as versions of themselves. Current scholarship has implicitly postulated that the social energy that led to the massive marginalization of New Christians and/or lowborns from central social spaces, and the marginals’ attempts to hide their true identity, had its roots in the elite’s rejection of sociocultural and genealogical heterogeneity, or “difference.” Christina Lee makes a key intervention in this discussion by proposing that there was a parallel phenomenon at play that might have been as resounding as an anxiety roused by the presence of those who were clearly different, a phenomenon she calls “the anxiety of sameness.” Lee argues that while conspicuous religious and socio-cultural difference was certainly perturbing and unsettling, in some ways, it was not as threatening to the dominant Spanish identity as the potential discovery of the arbitrariness that separated them from the undesirables of society. Students and seasoned scholars of Spanish history and literature will not only benefit from Lee’s arguments about the elite’s attempt to deny the fluidity of early modern identity, but also gain from her fresh readings of the works of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Quevedo, as well as her analyses of lesser known works, such as joke books, treatises, genealogical catalogues, and documentary accounts.Less
This book explores the Spanish elite’s fixation on social and racial “passing” and “passers” as represented in a wide range of texts produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It examines literary and non-literary works that express the dominant Spaniards’ anxiety that socially mobile New Christians could impersonate and pass as versions of themselves. Current scholarship has implicitly postulated that the social energy that led to the massive marginalization of New Christians and/or lowborns from central social spaces, and the marginals’ attempts to hide their true identity, had its roots in the elite’s rejection of sociocultural and genealogical heterogeneity, or “difference.” Christina Lee makes a key intervention in this discussion by proposing that there was a parallel phenomenon at play that might have been as resounding as an anxiety roused by the presence of those who were clearly different, a phenomenon she calls “the anxiety of sameness.” Lee argues that while conspicuous religious and socio-cultural difference was certainly perturbing and unsettling, in some ways, it was not as threatening to the dominant Spanish identity as the potential discovery of the arbitrariness that separated them from the undesirables of society. Students and seasoned scholars of Spanish history and literature will not only benefit from Lee’s arguments about the elite’s attempt to deny the fluidity of early modern identity, but also gain from her fresh readings of the works of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Quevedo, as well as her analyses of lesser known works, such as joke books, treatises, genealogical catalogues, and documentary accounts.
David J. Appleby
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719075612
- eISBN:
- 9781781701744
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719075612.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This book explores the religious, political and cultural implications of a collision of highly charged polemic prompted by the mass ejection of Puritan ministers from the Church of England in 1662, ...
More
This book explores the religious, political and cultural implications of a collision of highly charged polemic prompted by the mass ejection of Puritan ministers from the Church of England in 1662, providing an in-depth study of this heated exchange centring on the departing ministers' farewell sermons. Many of these valedictions, delivered by hundreds of dissenting preachers in the weeks before Bartholomew's Day, would be illegally printed and widely distributed, provoking a furious response from government officials, magistrates and bishops. The book re-interprets the political significance of ostensibly moderate Puritan clergy, arguing that their preaching posed a credible threat to the restored political order.Less
This book explores the religious, political and cultural implications of a collision of highly charged polemic prompted by the mass ejection of Puritan ministers from the Church of England in 1662, providing an in-depth study of this heated exchange centring on the departing ministers' farewell sermons. Many of these valedictions, delivered by hundreds of dissenting preachers in the weeks before Bartholomew's Day, would be illegally printed and widely distributed, provoking a furious response from government officials, magistrates and bishops. The book re-interprets the political significance of ostensibly moderate Puritan clergy, arguing that their preaching posed a credible threat to the restored political order.
John Gurney
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719061028
- eISBN:
- 9781781700747
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719061028.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This is a full-length modern study of the Diggers or ‘True Levellers’, who were among the most remarkable of the radical groups to emerge during the English Revolution of 1640–60. Acting at a time of ...
More
This is a full-length modern study of the Diggers or ‘True Levellers’, who were among the most remarkable of the radical groups to emerge during the English Revolution of 1640–60. Acting at a time of unparalleled political change and heightened millenarian expectation, the Diggers believed that the establishment of an egalitarian, property-less society was imminent. This book establishes the local origins of the Digger movement and sets out to examine pre-Civil War social relations and social tensions in the parish of Cobham—from where significant numbers of the Diggers came—and the impact of civil war in the local community. The book provides a detailed account of the Surrey Digger settlements and of local reactions to the Diggers, and it explores the spread of Digger activities beyond Surrey. In chapters on the writings and career of Gerrard Winstanley, the book seeks to offer a reinterpretation of one of the major thinkers of the English Revolution.Less
This is a full-length modern study of the Diggers or ‘True Levellers’, who were among the most remarkable of the radical groups to emerge during the English Revolution of 1640–60. Acting at a time of unparalleled political change and heightened millenarian expectation, the Diggers believed that the establishment of an egalitarian, property-less society was imminent. This book establishes the local origins of the Digger movement and sets out to examine pre-Civil War social relations and social tensions in the parish of Cobham—from where significant numbers of the Diggers came—and the impact of civil war in the local community. The book provides a detailed account of the Surrey Digger settlements and of local reactions to the Diggers, and it explores the spread of Digger activities beyond Surrey. In chapters on the writings and career of Gerrard Winstanley, the book seeks to offer a reinterpretation of one of the major thinkers of the English Revolution.
Henry French and Richard Hoyle
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719051081
- eISBN:
- 9781781700716
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719051081.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This book uses a study of a north Essex village to make a contribution to our knowledge of England between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Earls Colne has been well known to historians as the ...
More
This book uses a study of a north Essex village to make a contribution to our knowledge of England between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Earls Colne has been well known to historians as the parish of the seventeenth-century clerical diarist, Ralph Josselin, and was the subject of an extended research project by Alan Macfarlane in the early 1970s, which informed his study of English Individualism. Now, it is considered in the round with some surprising results. The authors test the theoretical perspectives of both Macfarlane and Robert Brenner, and reach new conclusions about the character of English rural society and the role that land played in it. The book asks fundamental questions about the ownership of land in early modern England and introduces a new methodology to examine these questions. In addition, it is also a study of a village with a resident gentry family — the Harlakendens — showing that the attempts by these new lords to re-mould the village after 1580 alienated many, leading to a series of well-documented power struggles. Ultimately, the book demonstrates that the Harlakendens failed to stamp their mark on the community, and their authority slowly ebbed away. In their place emerged an alternative power system dominated by copyholders and tenant farmers, who provide a rich gallery of village characters.Less
This book uses a study of a north Essex village to make a contribution to our knowledge of England between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Earls Colne has been well known to historians as the parish of the seventeenth-century clerical diarist, Ralph Josselin, and was the subject of an extended research project by Alan Macfarlane in the early 1970s, which informed his study of English Individualism. Now, it is considered in the round with some surprising results. The authors test the theoretical perspectives of both Macfarlane and Robert Brenner, and reach new conclusions about the character of English rural society and the role that land played in it. The book asks fundamental questions about the ownership of land in early modern England and introduces a new methodology to examine these questions. In addition, it is also a study of a village with a resident gentry family — the Harlakendens — showing that the attempts by these new lords to re-mould the village after 1580 alienated many, leading to a series of well-documented power struggles. Ultimately, the book demonstrates that the Harlakendens failed to stamp their mark on the community, and their authority slowly ebbed away. In their place emerged an alternative power system dominated by copyholders and tenant farmers, who provide a rich gallery of village characters.
Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719078729
- eISBN:
- 9781781703304
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719078729.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This book explores at length the French and English Catholic literary revivals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These parallel but mostly independent movements include writers ...
More
This book explores at length the French and English Catholic literary revivals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These parallel but mostly independent movements include writers such as Charles Péguy, Paul Claudel, J. K. Huysmans, Gerard Manley Hopkins, G. K. Chesterton and Lionel Johnson. Rejecting critical approaches that tend to treat Catholic writings as exotic marginalia, the book makes extensive use of secularisation theory to confront these Catholic writings with the preoccupations of secularism and modernity. It compares individual and societal secularisation in France and England and examines how French and English Catholic writers understood and contested secular mores, ideologies and praxis, in the individual, societal and religious domains. The book also addresses the extent to which some Catholic writers succumbed to the seduction of secular instincts, even paradoxically in themes that are considered to be emblematic of Catholic literature. Its breadth will make it a useful guide for students wishing to become familiar with a wide range of such writings in France and England during this period.Less
This book explores at length the French and English Catholic literary revivals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These parallel but mostly independent movements include writers such as Charles Péguy, Paul Claudel, J. K. Huysmans, Gerard Manley Hopkins, G. K. Chesterton and Lionel Johnson. Rejecting critical approaches that tend to treat Catholic writings as exotic marginalia, the book makes extensive use of secularisation theory to confront these Catholic writings with the preoccupations of secularism and modernity. It compares individual and societal secularisation in France and England and examines how French and English Catholic writers understood and contested secular mores, ideologies and praxis, in the individual, societal and religious domains. The book also addresses the extent to which some Catholic writers succumbed to the seduction of secular instincts, even paradoxically in themes that are considered to be emblematic of Catholic literature. Its breadth will make it a useful guide for students wishing to become familiar with a wide range of such writings in France and England during this period.
Lionel Laborie
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719089886
- eISBN:
- 9781526104007
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719089886.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This book examines the nature and significance of religious enthusiasm in early Enlightenment England. In the early modern period, the term ‘enthusiasm’ was a smear word used to discredit the ...
More
This book examines the nature and significance of religious enthusiasm in early Enlightenment England. In the early modern period, the term ‘enthusiasm’ was a smear word used to discredit the dissenters of the radical Reformation as dangerous religious fanatics. In England, the term gained prominence from the Civil War period and throughout the eighteenth century. Anglican ministers and the proponents of the Enlightenment used it more widely against Paracelsian chemists, experimental philosophers, religious dissenters and divines, astrologers or anyone claiming superior knowledge. As a result, our understanding of enthusiasm is largely influenced by the hostile discourse of Augustan moralist and early Enlighteners. But who exactly were these enthusiasts? What did they believe in, how did they operate as a community and what impact did they have on their contemporaries? This book aims to answer these questions by concentrating on the notorious case of the French Prophets. It demonstrates how the understanding of enthusiasm evolved around 1700, designating anything from a religious fanaticism to a social epidemic and even a bodily disease. It offers the first comprehensive approach to enthusiasm, looking at this multifarious issue from a successively social, religious, cultural, political and medical perspective. Based on extensive archival research, it sheds new light on the reality of enthusiasm away from the hostility of Enlightenment discourse.Less
This book examines the nature and significance of religious enthusiasm in early Enlightenment England. In the early modern period, the term ‘enthusiasm’ was a smear word used to discredit the dissenters of the radical Reformation as dangerous religious fanatics. In England, the term gained prominence from the Civil War period and throughout the eighteenth century. Anglican ministers and the proponents of the Enlightenment used it more widely against Paracelsian chemists, experimental philosophers, religious dissenters and divines, astrologers or anyone claiming superior knowledge. As a result, our understanding of enthusiasm is largely influenced by the hostile discourse of Augustan moralist and early Enlighteners. But who exactly were these enthusiasts? What did they believe in, how did they operate as a community and what impact did they have on their contemporaries? This book aims to answer these questions by concentrating on the notorious case of the French Prophets. It demonstrates how the understanding of enthusiasm evolved around 1700, designating anything from a religious fanaticism to a social epidemic and even a bodily disease. It offers the first comprehensive approach to enthusiasm, looking at this multifarious issue from a successively social, religious, cultural, political and medical perspective. Based on extensive archival research, it sheds new light on the reality of enthusiasm away from the hostility of Enlightenment discourse.
Peter D. G. Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719064289
- eISBN:
- 9781781700310
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719064289.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
The eighteenth century was long deemed ‘the classical age of the constitution’ in Britain, with cabinet government based on a two-party system of Whigs and Tories in Parliament, and a monarchy whose ...
More
The eighteenth century was long deemed ‘the classical age of the constitution’ in Britain, with cabinet government based on a two-party system of Whigs and Tories in Parliament, and a monarchy whose powers had been emasculated by the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689. This study furthers the work of Sir Lewis Namier, who, in 1929, argued that no such party system existed, George III was not a cypher, and that Parliament was an administration composed of factions and opposition. George III is a high-profile and well-known character in British history, whose policies have often been blamed for the loss of Britain's American colonies, around whom rages a perennial dispute over his aims: was he seeking to restore royal power or merely exercising his constitutional rights? This is a chronological survey of the first ten years of his reign through power politics and policy making.Less
The eighteenth century was long deemed ‘the classical age of the constitution’ in Britain, with cabinet government based on a two-party system of Whigs and Tories in Parliament, and a monarchy whose powers had been emasculated by the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689. This study furthers the work of Sir Lewis Namier, who, in 1929, argued that no such party system existed, George III was not a cypher, and that Parliament was an administration composed of factions and opposition. George III is a high-profile and well-known character in British history, whose policies have often been blamed for the loss of Britain's American colonies, around whom rages a perennial dispute over his aims: was he seeking to restore royal power or merely exercising his constitutional rights? This is a chronological survey of the first ten years of his reign through power politics and policy making.
Tobias B. Hug
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719079849
- eISBN:
- 9781781702413
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719079849.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
Impostors and impostures featured prominently in the political, social and religious life of early modern England. Who was likely to be perceived as impostor, and why? This book offers a full-scale ...
More
Impostors and impostures featured prominently in the political, social and religious life of early modern England. Who was likely to be perceived as impostor, and why? This book offers a full-scale analysis of this multifaceted phenomenon. Using approaches drawn from historical anthropology and micro-history, it investigates changes and continuities within the impostor phenomenon from 1500 to the late eighteenth century, exploring the variety of representations and perceptions of impostors, and their deeper meanings within the specific contexts of social, political, religious, institutional and cultural change. The book examines a wide range of sources, from judicial archives and other official records to chronicles, newspapers, ballads, pamphlets and autobiographical writings. Given that identity is never fixed, but involves a performative dimension, changing over time and space, it looks at the specific factors which constitute identity in a particular context, and asks why certain characteristics of an allegedly false identity were regarded as fake.Less
Impostors and impostures featured prominently in the political, social and religious life of early modern England. Who was likely to be perceived as impostor, and why? This book offers a full-scale analysis of this multifaceted phenomenon. Using approaches drawn from historical anthropology and micro-history, it investigates changes and continuities within the impostor phenomenon from 1500 to the late eighteenth century, exploring the variety of representations and perceptions of impostors, and their deeper meanings within the specific contexts of social, political, religious, institutional and cultural change. The book examines a wide range of sources, from judicial archives and other official records to chronicles, newspapers, ballads, pamphlets and autobiographical writings. Given that identity is never fixed, but involves a performative dimension, changing over time and space, it looks at the specific factors which constitute identity in a particular context, and asks why certain characteristics of an allegedly false identity were regarded as fake.
Robert Armstrong and Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780719086984
- eISBN:
- 9781781704981
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719086984.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This focused collection of essays offers a dynamic new perspective on the evolution of post-reformation religious communities within Britain and Ireland. A wide-ranging comparison of Catholicism and ...
More
This focused collection of essays offers a dynamic new perspective on the evolution of post-reformation religious communities within Britain and Ireland. A wide-ranging comparison of Catholicism and Presbyterianism across the archipelago has not previously been attempted, though telling points of comparison are readily apparent between two communions which aspired to the religious formation of national communities of faith, yet which, periodically or permanently, adapted to the disempowered position of dissident or proscribed faiths. The proposed book, the first volume to be prepared by the “Insular Christianity Network” founded in 2008 through a grant from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, is the fruit of a carefully planned collaboration which assembled many of the most distinguished scholars of Early Modern Religion in Britain and Ireland to engage with a number of pre-selected themes. Current study of Early Modern religious confessions in Ireland and Britain tends to be concentrate on one religious perspective in one particular part of the archipelago. This volume breaks new ground by offering a genuine cross-national comparative perspective on the manner in which two profoundly different and yet in some respects strikingly similar communions formulated aspirations, secured achievements and made adaptations.Less
This focused collection of essays offers a dynamic new perspective on the evolution of post-reformation religious communities within Britain and Ireland. A wide-ranging comparison of Catholicism and Presbyterianism across the archipelago has not previously been attempted, though telling points of comparison are readily apparent between two communions which aspired to the religious formation of national communities of faith, yet which, periodically or permanently, adapted to the disempowered position of dissident or proscribed faiths. The proposed book, the first volume to be prepared by the “Insular Christianity Network” founded in 2008 through a grant from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, is the fruit of a carefully planned collaboration which assembled many of the most distinguished scholars of Early Modern Religion in Britain and Ireland to engage with a number of pre-selected themes. Current study of Early Modern religious confessions in Ireland and Britain tends to be concentrate on one religious perspective in one particular part of the archipelago. This volume breaks new ground by offering a genuine cross-national comparative perspective on the manner in which two profoundly different and yet in some respects strikingly similar communions formulated aspirations, secured achievements and made adaptations.
Robert Poole
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719062032
- eISBN:
- 9781781700150
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719062032.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This book is a major study of England's biggest and best-known witch trial, which took place in 1612, when ten witches were arraigned and hanged in the village of Pendle in Lancashire. In it, 11 ...
More
This book is a major study of England's biggest and best-known witch trial, which took place in 1612, when ten witches were arraigned and hanged in the village of Pendle in Lancashire. In it, 11 experts from a variety of fields offer surveys of these events and their meanings for contemporaries, for later generations, and for the present day. Chapters look at the politics and ideology of witch-hunting, the conduct of the trial, the social and economic contexts, the religious background, and the local and family details of the episode.Less
This book is a major study of England's biggest and best-known witch trial, which took place in 1612, when ten witches were arraigned and hanged in the village of Pendle in Lancashire. In it, 11 experts from a variety of fields offer surveys of these events and their meanings for contemporaries, for later generations, and for the present day. Chapters look at the politics and ideology of witch-hunting, the conduct of the trial, the social and economic contexts, the religious background, and the local and family details of the episode.