Lying in Early Modern English Culture

Lying in Early Modern English Culture
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Total Pages : 385
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780192506580
ISBN-13 : 0192506587
Rating : 4/5 (80 Downloads)

Synopsis Lying in Early Modern English Culture by : Andrew Hadfield

Lying in Early Modern English Culture is a major study of ideas of truth and falsehood in early modern England from the advent of the Reformation to the aftermath of the failed Gunpowder Plot. The period is characterised by panic and chaos when few had any idea how religious, cultural, and social life would develop after the traumatic division of Christendom. While many saw the need for a secular power to define the truth others declared that their allegiances belonged elsewhere. Accordingly there was a constant battle between competing authorities for the right to declare what was the truth and so label opponents as liars. Issues of truth and lying were, therefore, a constant feature of everyday life and determined ideas of individual identity, politics, speech, sex, marriage, and social behaviour, as well as philosophy and religion. This book is a cultural history of truth and lying from the 1530s to the 1610s, showing how lying needs to be understood in action as well as in theory. Unlike most histories of lying, it concentrates on a series of particular events reading them in terms of academic theories and more popular notions of lying. The book covers a wide range of material such as the trials of Ann Boleyn and Thomas More, the divorce of Frances Howard, and the murder of Anthony James by Annis and George Dell; works of literature such as Othello, The Faerie Queene, A Mirror for Magistrates, and The Unfortunate Traveller; works of popular culture such as the herring pamphlet of 1597; and major writings by Castiglione, Montaigne, Erasmus, Luther, and Tyndale.

Mendacity in Early Modern Literature and Culture

Mendacity in Early Modern Literature and Culture
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 128
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781317229506
ISBN-13 : 1317229509
Rating : 4/5 (06 Downloads)

Synopsis Mendacity in Early Modern Literature and Culture by : Ingo Berensmeyer

Mendacity in Early Modern Literature and Culture examines the historical, cultural, and epistemological underpinnings of lying and deception in early modern England, including the political, religious, aesthetic, and philosophical discourses that governed the codes of lying and truth-telling from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries. The contributions to this collection draw on a wide range of early modern English literature from Shakespeare to Swift, and from travel writing to poetry, in order to explore the extent to which plays, poems, and narrative texts in this period were sites of negotiation, and, at times, of ideological warfare between the moral imperative of truth-telling and the expediency of telling lies. What were the cultural norms of truthfulness and lying, and on what basis were they constructed? What were the consequences when someone did not share the assumed common project of truth-telling? And which forms of communication were exempt from the pragmatic strictures on mendacious discourse? This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of English Studies.

Literature and Political Intellection in Early Stuart England

Literature and Political Intellection in Early Stuart England
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 255
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780198844068
ISBN-13 : 0198844069
Rating : 4/5 (68 Downloads)

Synopsis Literature and Political Intellection in Early Stuart England by : Todd Wayne Butler

Todd Butler charts how some of the Stuart period's major challenges to governance evoked much greater disputes about the mental processes by which monarchs and subjects imagined and effected political action. He draws upon a myriad of literary and political texts, including the work of Francis Bacon, John Donne, Philip Massinger, and John Milton.

On the Edge of Truth and Honesty: Principles and Strategies of Fraud and Deceit in the Early Modern Period

On the Edge of Truth and Honesty: Principles and Strategies of Fraud and Deceit in the Early Modern Period
Author :
Publisher : BRILL
Total Pages : 336
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9789004475922
ISBN-13 : 9004475923
Rating : 4/5 (22 Downloads)

Synopsis On the Edge of Truth and Honesty: Principles and Strategies of Fraud and Deceit in the Early Modern Period by :

In the early modern period, deceit and fraud were common issues. Acutely aware of the ubiquity and multiplicity of simulation and dissimulation, people from this period made serious efforts to gain a better understanding of the phenomenon, trying to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable, pleasant and unpleasant, wicked and virtuous forms of deceit, and seeking to unravel its principles, strategies, and functions. The twelve case-studies in this volume focus on the use of deceit by several groups of people in different spheres of life, as well as on its representation in literary and artistic genres, and its conceptualization in philosophical and rhetorical discourses. The studies testify to the rich variety of deceitful strategies applied by people from the early modern period, as well as to the subtlety and diversity of the conceptual frameworks they construed in order to grasp the many aspects of the elusive yet all-pervasive phenomenon of deceit. Contributors include: Daniel Acke, Jacques Bos, Wiep van Bunge, Evelien Chayes, Paul J.C.M. Franssen, Paul van Heck, Toon van Houdt, Alfons K.L. Thijs, Bert Timmermans, Johannes Trapman, Mark van Vaeck, Natascha Veldhorst, and Johan Verberckmoes.

Dissimulation and Deceit in Early Modern Europe

Dissimulation and Deceit in Early Modern Europe
Author :
Publisher : Springer
Total Pages : 246
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781137447494
ISBN-13 : 1137447494
Rating : 4/5 (94 Downloads)

Synopsis Dissimulation and Deceit in Early Modern Europe by : Miriam Eliav-Feldon

In this book, twelve scholars of early modern history analyse various categories and cases of deception and false identity in the age of geographical discoveries and of forced conversions: from two-faced conversos to serial converts, from demoniacs to stigmatics, and from self-appointed ambassadors to lying cosmographer.

Shakespeare and the Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England

Shakespeare and the Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England
Author :
Publisher : Studies in Religion and Litera
Total Pages : 468
Release :
ISBN-10 : UOM:39015052881615
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (15 Downloads)

Synopsis Shakespeare and the Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England by : Dennis Taylor

The question of Shakespeare's Catholic contexts has occupied many scholars in recent years and this study brings together 16 original essays examining Shakespeare's work in the light of revisionist scholarship, from monastic life in 'Measure for Measure' to Puritanism in 'Hamlet'.

Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe

Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe
Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Total Pages : 284
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0521520207
ISBN-13 : 9780521520201
Rating : 4/5 (07 Downloads)

Synopsis Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe by : Edmund Leites

An examination of a fundamental aspect of the intellectual history of early modern Europe.

A Mirror for Magistrates in Context

A Mirror for Magistrates in Context
Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Total Pages : 273
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781316715178
ISBN-13 : 1316715175
Rating : 4/5 (78 Downloads)

Synopsis A Mirror for Magistrates in Context by : Harriet Archer

This is the first essay collection on A Mirror for Magistrates, the most popular work of English literature in the age of Shakespeare. The Mirror is here analysed by major scholars, who discuss its meaning and significance, and assess the extent of its influence as a series of tragic stories showing powerful princes and governors brought low by fate and enemy action. Scholars debate the challenging and radical nature of the Mirror's politics, its significance as a work of material culture, its relationship to oral culture as print was becoming ever more important, and the complicated evolution of its diverse texts. Other chapters discuss the importance of the book as the first major work that represented Roman history for a literary audience, the sly humour contained in the tragedies and their influence on major writers such as Spenser and Shakespeare.

Childbirth and the Display of Authority in Early Modern France

Childbirth and the Display of Authority in Early Modern France
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 407
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781351952392
ISBN-13 : 1351952390
Rating : 4/5 (92 Downloads)

Synopsis Childbirth and the Display of Authority in Early Modern France by : Lianne McTavish

Throughout the early modern period in France, surgeon men-midwives were predominantly associated with sexual impropriety and physical danger; yet over time they managed to change their image, and by the eighteenth century were summoned to attend even the uncomplicated deliveries of wealthy, urban clients. In this study, Lianne McTavish explores how surgeons strove to transform the perception of their midwifery practices, claiming to be experts who embodied obstetrical authority instead of intruders in a traditionally feminine domain. McTavish argues that early modern French obstetrical treatises were sites of display participating in both the production and contestation of authoritative knowledge of childbirth. Though primarily written by surgeon men-midwives, the texts were also produced by female midwives and male physicians. McTavish's careful examination of these and other sources reveals representations of male and female midwives as unstable and divergent, undermining characterizations of the practice of childbirth in early modern Europe as a gender war which men ultimately won. She discovers that male practitioners did not always disdain maternal values. In fact, the men regularly identified themselves with qualities traditionally respected in female midwives, including a bodily experience of childbirth. Her findings suggest that men's entry into the lying-in chamber was a complex negotiation involving their adaptation to the demands of women. One of the great strengths of this study is its investigation of the visual culture of childbirth. McTavish emphasizes how authority in the birthing room was made visible to others in facial expressions, gestures, and bodily display. For the first time here, the vivid images in the treatises are analysed, including author portraits and engravings of unborn figures. McTavish reveals how these images contributed to arguments about obstetrical authority instead of merely illustrating the written content of the books. At the same time, her arguments move far beyond the lying-in chamber, shedding light on the exchange of visual information in early modern France, a period when identity was largely determined by the precarious act of putting oneself on display.