Wietse de Boer. and 
Christine Göttler., eds. Religion and the Senses in Early Modern Europe. Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture 26. Leiden: Brill, 2012. xxvi + 494 pp. $234. ISBN: 978–90–04–23634–9.

In early modern Europe, anatomists elaborated theoretical discourses concerning the role of the senses in the acquisition of scientific knowledge. This “sensorial program” gave birth to spaces of public demonstration — anatomy theatres — specifically designed to orchestrate an audience’s attention toward the actions and gestures of anatomy’s scientists. These public performances of scientific knowledge in turn influenced the conception, construction, and uses of the theatrical stage.

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VIOLENCE AND CIVILITY IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE

The Historical Journal ◽

10.1017/s0018246x06005358 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 49 (2) ◽

pp. 593-603 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

ALEXANDRA SHEPARD

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Early Modern Period ◽

Early Modern Europe ◽

Modern Culture ◽

Cambridge University ◽

Modern Germany ◽

Norbert Elias ◽

History Of ◽

Modern Europe

Violence in early modern Europe, 1500–1800. By Julius R. Ruff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xii+269. ISBN 0-521-59119-8. £13.95.The London mob: violence and disorder in eighteenth-century England. By Robert Shoemaker. London: Hambledon and London, 2004. Pp. xvi+393. ISBN 1-85285-389-1. £25.00.Outlaws and highwaymen: the cult of the robber in England from the middle ages to the nineteenth century. By Gillian Spraggs. London: Pimlico, 2001. Pp. x+372. ISBN 0-7126-6479-3. £12.50.The duel in early modern England: civility, politeness and honour. By Markku Peltonen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. x+355. ISBN 0-521-82062-6. £45.00.Swordsmen: the martial ethos in the three kingdoms. By Roger B. Manning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xvi+272. ISBN 0-19-926121-0. £47.00.Rebellion, community and custom in early modern Germany. By Norbert Schindler, translated by Pamela E. Selwyn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv+311. ISBN 0-521-65010-0. £55.00.The history of violence appears to hold a particular fascination for scholars of the early modern period. This is not least because it is so often deemed integral to the differences between modern and pre-modern culture and politics, despite the fact that this particular difference is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. The progressive decline and containment of violence – or at least certain forms of violence – has been central to narratives of state formation, the transition from courtesy to civility, a shift from aristocratic to bourgeois cultural hegemony, and the ‘civilizing process’ first theorized by Norbert Elias. Despite Michel Foucault's complication (if not rejection) of their teleological assumptions, such celebratory accounts of modernization have proved remarkably tenacious, albeit in a fragmented fashion. As the selection of books under review here illustrates, with the exception of Manning and, most notably, Peltonen, current scholarship is more likely to uphold, or to modify subtly, rather than to reject entrenched views of a gradual abeyance of violence in early modern Europe in response to imperatives of civility and politeness and to emergent state control.

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Religion and the Senses in Early Modern Europe

10.1163/9789004236653 ◽

2013 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Early Modern Europe ◽

The Senses ◽

Modern Europe

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