Drawing on archaeological, historical, theological, scientific and folkloric sources, Sarah Tarlow's interdisciplinary study examines belief as it relates to the dead body in early modern Britain and Ireland. From the theological discussion of bodily resurrection to the folkloric use of body parts as remedies, and from the judicial punishment of the corpse to the ceremonial interment of the social elite, this book discusses how seemingly incompatible beliefs about the dead body existed in parallel through this tumultuous period. This study, which is the first to incorporate archaeological evidence of early modern death and burial from across Britain and Ireland, addresses new questions about the materiality of death: what the dead body means, and how its physical substance could be attributed with sentience and even agency. It provides a sophisticated original interpretive framework for the growing quantities of archaeological and historical evidence about mortuary beliefs and practices in early modernity.

Sarah Tarlow's interdisciplinary study examines belief as it relates to the dead body in early modern Britain and Ireland.

Sarah Tarlow's interdisciplinary study examines belief as it relates to the dead body in early modern Britain and Ireland.

This book explores the cultural and intellectual stakes of medieval and renaissance Britain's sense of itself as living in the shadow of Rome: a city whose name could designate the ancient, fallen, quintessentially human power that had conquered and colonized Britain, and also the alternately sanctified and demonized Roman Church. Wallace takes medieval texts in a range of languages (including Latin, medieval Welsh, Old English and Old French) and places them in conversation with early modern English and humanistic Latin texts (including works by Gildas, Bede, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Bacon, St. Augustine, Dante, Erasmus, Luther and Montaigne). 'The Ordinary', 'The Self', 'The Word', and 'The Dead' are taken as compass points by which individuals lived out their orientations to, and against, Rome, isolating important dimensions of Rome's enduring ability to shape and complicate the effort to come to terms with the nature of self and the structure of human community.

Uses the idea of the box in early modern England to develop a new direction in book history and material culture.

The early modern period inherited a deeply-ingrained culture of Christian remembrance that proved a platform for creativity in a remarkable variety of forms. From the literature of church ritual to the construction of monuments; from portraiture to the arrangement of domestic interiors; from the development of textual rites to drama of the contemporary stage, the early modern world practiced 'arts of remembrance' at every turn. The turmoils of the Reformation and its aftermath transformed the habits of creating through remembrance. Ritually observed and radically reinvented, remembrance was a focal point of the early modern cultural imagination for an age when beliefs both crossed and divided communities of the faithful. The Arts of Remembrance in Early Modern England maps the new terrain of remembrance in the post-Reformation period, charting its negotiations with the material, the textual and the performative.

This book explores historical, socio-political, and metatheatrical readings of a whole host of dying bodies and risen corpses, each part of a long tradition of living death on stage. Just as zombies, ghouls, and the undead in modern media often stand in for present-day concerns, early modern writers frequently imagined living death in complex ways that allowed them to address contemporary anxieties. These include fresh bleeding bodies (and body parts), ghostly Lord Mayors, and dying characters who must carefully choose their last words – or have those words chosen for them by the living. As well as offering fresh interpretations of well-known plays such as Middleton’s The Lady’s Tragedy and Webster’s The White Devil, this innovative study also sheds light on less well-known works such as the anonymous The Tragedy of Locrine, Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge, and Munday’s mayoral pageants Chruso-thriambos and Chrysanaleia. The author demonstrates that wherever characters in early modern drama appear to straddle the line between this world and the next, it is rarely a simple matter of life and death. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners in theatre and performance studies, and cultural and social studies.

Implements stories of surgical alteration to consider how early modern individuals conceived the relationship between body, mind, and self.

In Death and Disorder, award-winning teacher Ken MacMillan introduces readers to the tumultuous world of Tudor and Stuart England. During this period, numerous kings and queens were killed, their advisors assassinated, treasonous nobles beheaded, religious heretics burned at the stake, and common criminals executed by hanging. Combined with devastating plagues, a high rate of infant mortality, and violence on the battlefield, these events created an environment of disorder. MacMillan argues that both despite and because of the prevalence of death and disorder in early modern England, these two centuries saw critical historical developments. Each chapter opens with a thematic vignette, closes with an excerpt from a primary source, and includes images and engaging discussion questions. The book also provides a timeline of key events, genealogical charts, and a list of further resources.

Through its rich foray into popular literary culture and medical history, this book investigates representations of regular and irregular medical practice in early modern England. Focusing on the prolific figures of the barber, surgeon and barber-surgeon, the author explores what it meant to the early modern population for a group of practitioners to be associated with both the trade guilds and an emerging professional medical world. The book uncovers the differences and cross-pollinations between barbers and surgeons' practices which play out across the literature: we learn not only about their cultural, civic, medical and occupational histories but also about how we should interpret patterns in language, name choice, performance, materiality, acoustics and semiology in the period. The investigations prompt new readings of Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton and Beaumont, among others. And with chapters delving into early modern representations of medical instruments, hairiness, bloodletting procedures, waxy or infected ears, wart removals and skeletons, readers will find much of the contribution of this book is in its detail, which brings its subject to life.