Early modern studies: Ebooks
It's been a while since I posted here. I did a lot of travelling in 2023, there are other projects I'm working on, and suddenly I find it's been months since I last posted. It's not that I haven't been working on the early modern period. Last summer, I was back in the University Library…
Literature and terrorism
The go-to guy for an understanding of the ways in which terrorism has been represented in literature is Peter C. Herman, author of Terrorism and Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Unspeakable: Literature and Terrorism from the Gunpowder Plot to 9/11 (Routledge, 2019). Although his scope is broader than the early modern period, he dev…
TIDE (Travel, Transculturality and Identity in England, c. 1500-1700)
Travel, Transculturality and Identity in England is a project funded by the ERC (European Research Council), exploring issues relating to strangers, travellers, migrants and so on. The website is an open-access resource consisting (at present) of some 40 essays contributed by Nandini Das, João Vicente Melo, Haig Smith, and Lauren Working based on k…
The hurt(ful) body
The hurt(ful) body Performing and beholding pain, 1600–1800 Edited by Dr Tomas Macsotay, Cornelis van der Haven and Karel Vanhaesebrouck Manchester University Press, July 2017 I know! It has been too long - far too long - since I updated this blog! Nothing could illustrate that more clearly than the fact that this book came…
Death in Medieval Europe
Death in Medieval Europe I haven't been keeping up with posts over the last few months - too many other things going on! I'll try to remedy that and catch up on interesting developments in the field (suppose I should make that my New Year's resolution!). Anyway, here's a new publication that may be of…
Two new books on the history of pain
Continuing my attempt to keep up with research in the field, here are two recent publications in the field of medical humanities. Rob Boddice (ed.), Pain and Emotion in Modern History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Chapters by Rob Boddice, Javier Mocoso, Paolo Santangelo, David Biro, Joanna Bourke, Wilfried Witte, Nouémi Tousignant, Sheen…
Torture and the Art of Holy Dying
[For this post I am indebted to Olivia Weisser who, in response to my post on The Sufferings of the Martyrs and the Transgressive Female Gaze, very kindly sent me an extract from her dissertation, Gender and Illness in Early Modern England (John Hopkins, 2010), which she is currently working up for publication with Yale…
Two Recent Books on Gender and Violence in the Early Modern Period
1. Jennifer Feather and Catherine E. Thomas, eds., Violent Masculinities: Male Aggression in Early Modern Texts and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). As the blurb has it, "During the early modern period in England, social expectations for men came under extreme pressure; the armed knight went into decline and humanism appeared. Here, original ess…
Gender and Heroism in Early Modern English Literature
Mary Beth Rose, Gender and Heroism in Early Modern English Literature (University of Chicago Press, 2002), makes the important point that 'the terms which constitute the heroics of endurance are precisely those terms used to construct the early modern idealization of women: patient suffering, mildness, humility, chastity, loyalty and obedience. Con…
Sadomasochism, Theology and Capitalism
There is a frustrating ambiguity to Jeremy R. Carrette, 'Intense Exchange: Sadomasochism, Theology and the Politics of Late Capitalism' (theotherjournal.com, An Intersection of Theology and Culture, April 2, 2006). To some extent this is deliberate; Carrette wants to ‘refuse the either/or mentality of Christian binary epistemology and to recognise …