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Impostures in Early Modern England: Representations and Perceptions of Fraudulent Identities

Online ISBN:
9781781702413
Print ISBN:
9780719079849
Publisher:
Manchester University Press
Book

Impostures in Early Modern England: Representations and Perceptions of Fraudulent Identities

Published:
1 February 2010
Online ISBN:
9781781702413
Print ISBN:
9780719079849
Publisher:
Manchester University Press

Abstract

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.

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