Sophie Oliver, ‘Sacred and (Sub)human Pain’, Facebook Beheadings…
Thoughts arising from Sophie Oliver, ‘Sacred and (Sub)humanPain: The Body as Witness in Early Modern Hagiography and ContemporaryLiterature of Atrocity’, in Nancy Billias, ed., Promoting and Producing Evil (Editions Rodopi, 2010), pp. 119-137. An earlier version of this paper is available online here. In the following I draw on both versions. Olive…
Rude Boys in Seventeenth-Century England
Far from originating in the Jamaican ska scene of the 1960s, rude boys (and girls) were flourishing in the seventeenth century, gaining particular note for their attacks on Quakers, to the extent that George Foxe recommended ‘that some Friends be appointed at every Meeting to keep the Doors, to keep down rude Boys and unruly…
Conference Podcast: Pain, Piety and Ageing: Sacred Suffering in Early Modern Portraits of Old Women
Dr. Erin Campbell gives a paper at Pain and Old Age: Three Centuries of Suffering in Silence?, a conference held by the Birkbeck Pain Project and Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities on October 27, 2012. Here's the link. To listen directly to the podcast, click here. a…
Seventeenth-Century Tidbits #7: A broomstick’s-eye view of London
This is wonderful!…
Seventeenth-Century Tidbits #6: The Colour of Carrots
In the seventeenth century most carrots were coloured purple!…
New Book on Early Modern Perceptions of the Male and Female Body
Helen, King, The One-Sex Body on Trial: The Classical and Early Modern Evidence (Ashgate, 2013).This has only just come out, and I have not yet read it, but it looks as if it may turn out to be a significant contribution to early modern gender studies. Since a large part of my own work hinges…
Conference: Pain and Suffering in Early Modern Performance and the Visual Arts
Click here for a detailed programme of events. Please don't contact me in connection with this event, since I am neither organizing it nor taking part in it! I am simply passing on the information. If anyone does attend it and would like to pass on some feedback to me, that would be very welcome!…
Medieval sex
The History Blog has an amusing flow chart on medieval sex.…
The Early Modern View of Evil
I’d like in this post to ruminate a bit on some points raised in a couple of papers on early modern thinking on the nature of evil by Samuel Newlands. The papers are: Leibniz on Privations, Limitations, and the Metaphysics of Evil (henceforth ‘Leibnitz’) Evils, Privations, and the Early Moderns (henceforth ‘Evils’) A full list…
Seventeenth-Century Tidbits #5: Sex and the City in 17th-century England
Women's gossip about their sex lives in seventeenth-century England:Sex & The c17th City…
