Love, Lust, and License in Early Modern England

Love, Lust, and License in Early Modern England PDF Author: Johanna Rickman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351921223
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Focusing on cases of extramarital sex, Johanna Rickman investigates fornication, adultery and bastard bearing among the English nobility during the Elizabethan and early Stuart period. Since members of the nobility were not generally brought before the ecclesiastical courts, which had jurisdiction over other citizens' sexual offences, Rickman's sources include collections of family papers (primarily letters), state papers, and literary texts (prescriptive manuals, love sonnets, satirical verse, and prose romances), as well as legal documents. Rickman explores how attitudes towards illicit sex varied greatly throughout the period of study, roughly 1560 - 1630. Whole some viewed it as a minor infraction, others, directed by a religious moral code, viewed it as a serious sin. seeks to illuminate the place of noblewomenin early modern aristocratic culture, both as historical subjects (considering personal circumstances) and as a social group (considering social position and status).She argues that two different gender ideals were in operation simultaneously: one primarily religious ideal, which lauded female silence, obedience, and chastity, and another, more secular ideal, which required noblewomen to be beautiful, witty, brave, and receptive to the games of courtly love.

Love, Lust, and License in Early Modern England

Love, Lust, and License in Early Modern England PDF Author: Johanna Rickman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351921223
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Get Book

Book Description
Focusing on cases of extramarital sex, Johanna Rickman investigates fornication, adultery and bastard bearing among the English nobility during the Elizabethan and early Stuart period. Since members of the nobility were not generally brought before the ecclesiastical courts, which had jurisdiction over other citizens' sexual offences, Rickman's sources include collections of family papers (primarily letters), state papers, and literary texts (prescriptive manuals, love sonnets, satirical verse, and prose romances), as well as legal documents. Rickman explores how attitudes towards illicit sex varied greatly throughout the period of study, roughly 1560 - 1630. Whole some viewed it as a minor infraction, others, directed by a religious moral code, viewed it as a serious sin. seeks to illuminate the place of noblewomenin early modern aristocratic culture, both as historical subjects (considering personal circumstances) and as a social group (considering social position and status).She argues that two different gender ideals were in operation simultaneously: one primarily religious ideal, which lauded female silence, obedience, and chastity, and another, more secular ideal, which required noblewomen to be beautiful, witty, brave, and receptive to the games of courtly love.

England and Spain in the Early Modern Era

England and Spain in the Early Modern Era PDF Author: Óscar Alfredo Ruiz Fernández
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350133434
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
The early 17th century was a time of great literature the era of Cervantes and Shakespeare but also of international tension and heightened diplomacy. This book looks at the relations between Spain under Philip III and Philip IV and England under James I in the period 1603-1625. It examines the essential issues that established the framework for diplomatic relations between the two states, looking not only at questions of war and peace, but also of trade and piracy. Óscar Alfredo Ruiz Fernández expertly argues that the diplomatic relationship was vital to the strategic interests of both powers and also played a highly significant role in the domestic agendas of each country. Based on Spanish and English archival sources, England and Spain in the Early Modern Era provides, for the first time, a clear picture of diplomacy between England and Spain in the early modern era.

Gender and Representations of the Female Subject in Early Modern England

Gender and Representations of the Female Subject in Early Modern England PDF Author: Akiko Kusunoki
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137558938
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
This book examines the interactions between social assumptions about womanhood and women's actual voices represented in plays and writings by authors of both genders in Jacobean England, placing the special emphasis on Lady Mary Wroth.

Lying in Early Modern English Culture

Lying in Early Modern English Culture PDF Author: Andrew Hadfield
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192506587
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
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.

Infertility in Early Modern England

Infertility in Early Modern England PDF Author: Daphna Oren-Magidor
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137476680
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
This book explores the experiences of people who struggled with fertility problems in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England. Motherhood was central to early modern women’s identity and was even seen as their path to salvation. To a lesser extent, fatherhood played an important role in constructing proper masculinity. When childbearing failed this was seen not only as a medical problem but as a personal emotional crisis. Infertility in Early Modern England highlights the experiences of early modern infertile couples: their desire for children, the social stigmas they faced, and the ways that social structures and religious beliefs gave meaning to infertility. It also describes the methods of treating fertility problems, from home-remedies to water cures. Offering a multi-faceted view, the book demonstrates the centrality of religion to every aspect of early modern infertility, from understanding to treatment. It also highlights the ways in which infertility unsettled the social order by placing into question the gendered categories of femininity and masculinity.

Women's Wealth and Women's Writing in Early Modern England

Women's Wealth and Women's Writing in Early Modern England PDF Author: Elizabeth Mazzola
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351871153
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Focusing on both literary and material networks in early modern England, this book examines the nature of women's wealth, its peculiar laws of transmission and accumulation, and how a world of goods and favors, mothers and daughters was transformed by market culture. Drawing on the long and troubled relationship between Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart, Bess of Hardwick, and Arbella Stuart, Elizabeth Mazzola more broadly explores what early modern women might exchange with or leave to each other, including jewels and cloth, needlework, combs, and candlesticks. Women's writings take their place in this circulation of material things, and Mazzola argues that their poems and prayers, letters and wills are particularly designed with the aim of substantiating female ties. This book is an interdisciplinary one, making use of archival research, literary criticism, social history, feminist theory, and anthropological studies of gift exchange to propose that early modern women - whatever their class, educational background or marital status - were key economic players, actively pursuing favors, trading services, and exchanging goods.

Love, Madness, and Scandal

Love, Madness, and Scandal PDF Author: Johanna Luthman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019106971X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The high society of Stuart England found Frances Coke Villiers, Viscountess Purbeck (1602-1645) an exasperating woman. She lived at a time when women were expected to be obedient, silent, and chaste, but Frances displayed none of these qualities. Her determination to ignore convention contributed in no small measure to a life of high drama, one which encompassed kidnappings, secret rendezvous, an illegitimate child, accusations of black magic, imprisonments, disappearances, and exile, not to mention court appearances, high-speed chases, a jail-break, deadly disease, royal fury, and - by turns - religious condemnation and conversion. As a child, Frances became a political pawn at the court of King James I. Her wealthy parents, themselves trapped in a disastrous marriage, fought tooth and nail over whom Frances should marry, pulling both king and court into their extended battles. When Frances was fifteen, her father forced her to marry John Villiers, the elder brother of the royal favourite, the Duke of Buckingham. But as her husband succumbed to mental illness, Frances fell for another man, and soon found herself pregnant with her lover's child. The Viscountess paid a heavy price for her illicit love. Her outraged in-laws used their influence to bring her down. But bravely defying both social and religious convention, Frances refused to bow to the combined authority of her family, her church, or her king, and fought stubbornly to defend her honour, as well as the position of her illegitimate son. On one level a thrilling tale of love and sex, kidnapping and elopement, the life of Frances Coke Villiers is also the story of an exceptional woman, whose personal experiences intertwined with the court politics and religious disputes of a tumultuous and crucially formative period in English history.

Family and Feuding at the Court of James I

Family and Feuding at the Court of James I PDF Author: Johanna Luthman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192865781
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
In early 1618, Anne Cecil (nee Lake), Lady Roos, accused Frances Cecil, countess of Exeter, of having committed adultery and incest with her husband, the countess's step grandson, William Cecil, Lord Roos. The countess had attempted to poison her twice, first with a poisoned enema, and later with a poisoned syrup of roses. With the help of the countess, Lord Roos secretively fled England for Catholic Italy, leaving his wife and family behind. Now, the murderous countess was again planning to poison Lady Roos, and perhaps also her father, Sir Thomas Lake, the king's Secretary of State. The countess vehemently denied these sensational charges, fell on her knees before the king, and asked for justice and restoration of her damaged honour. The accusations and the countess's defence quickly became a public scandal. The king and council investigated and ordered the matter be solved in the Court of Star Chamber. The Lake and Cecil families promptly sued and counter-sued each other for slander. The trials attracted much attention, not least because Lake's position as Secretary hung in the balance, and because King James decided to emulate the Biblical King Solomon and sit as a judge himself. While the feud and entangled scandals make for sensational reading, they also offer unexplored windows into the culture, society, and politics of Jacobean England. These were events with resounding reverberations and profound impacts on the Jacobean court, involving both its domestic and foreign spheres. Here Johanna Luthman scrutinises the scandals in detail for the first time. Employing a diverse range of methodologies and critical lenses, including those from the history of medicine and gender, and an analysis of several court cases that have not yet been studied, Luthman demonstrates the importance of incorporating the history of these scandals into an understanding of complex and fraught world of the court of King James VI. In so doing, the book offers new perspectives from which to understand the period, and will be necessary reading for all those interested in Jacobean history, as well as the history of gender, family, medicine, and scandal more generally.

If I Lose Mine Honor, I Lose Myself

If I Lose Mine Honor, I Lose Myself PDF Author: Courtney Erin Thomas
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487501226
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Courtney Thomas offers an intriguing investigation of honour's social meanings amongst early modern elites in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England.

The Politics of Female Households: Ladies-in-waiting across Early Modern Europe

The Politics of Female Households: Ladies-in-waiting across Early Modern Europe PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004258396
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
The Politics of Female Households is the first collection that seeks to integrate ladies-in-waiting into the master narrative of early modern court studies. Presenting evidence and analysis of the multifarious ways in which ‘women above stairs’ shaped the European courts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it argues for a re-assessment of their political influence. The cultural agency of ladies-in-waiting is viewed in the reflection of portraiture, pamphlets and masques: their political dealings and patronage are revealed through analysis of letters, family networks, career patterns, gift exchange and household structures, as well as their activities in the fields of intelligence-gathering and espionage. By concentrating on a previously neglected area of female agency, this collection demonstrates clearly that the political climate of Europe was often shaped outside the male-dominated institutions of government and administration. Contributors include: Helen Graham-Matheson, Hannah Leah Crummé, Katrin Keller, Vanessa de Cruz, Birgit Houben, Dries Raeymaekers, Janet Ravenscroft, Una McIlvenna, Rosalind K. Marshall, Oliver Mallick, Cynthia Fry, Nadine Akkerman, Sara J. Wolfson, Fabian Persson, and Jeroen Duindam.