Jeffery C. Ganim and Russell Persels, eds. Fecal Matters in Early Modern Literature and Art: Studies in Scatology. Studies in European Cultural Transition 21. Aldershot and Burlington, VT : Ashgate Publishing Company, 2004. xxii + 192 pp. index. illus. bibl. $79.95. ISBN: 0-7546-4116-3.

2005 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 980-981
Author(s):  
Carla Freccero
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Publishing Company ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Cultural Transition ◽  
Ashgate Publishing

The Undoing of a Man: Cuckoldry in Heywood's Edward IV

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-267
Author(s):  
Jonathan Wright
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Social Construct

Manhood was a complex social construct in early modern England. Males could not simply mature or grow from boys to men. Instead, they had to assert or prove they were men in multiple ways, such as growing a beard, behaving courageously in battle, exercising self-control in walking, talking, weeping, eating, and drinking, pursuing manly interests, exhibiting manly behaviors, avoiding interests or behaviors typically ascribed to women, marrying a woman and providing for her physical, sexual, and spiritual needs, and living and dying as a faithful Christian. Once a male became a “man” in the eyes of others, his efforts shifted from “making” himself manly to maintaining or defending his reputation as a “true man.” All men could undermine their manhood through their own actions or inactions, but the married man could also lose his reputation through his wife's infidelity. Numerous literary husbands in early modern literature live anxiously with the knowledge they might suffer a cuckold's humiliation and shame. Matthew Shore, who “treasures” his wife to a fault in Thomas Heywood's two-part play Edward IV, is an exceptional example of such a husband. This critical reading of Edward IV explores the complexity of manhood in Heywood's day by showing various males trying to assert or defend their manhood; explaining why husbands had reasons to fear cuckoldry; analyzing how Jane Shore's infidelity affects her husband; following Matthew Shore's journey from trusting husband to distrusting, bitter cuckold, to forgiving husband; and examining his seemingly inexplicable death at the end of the play.

St Paul's Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roze Hentschell
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Performance Space ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Discrete Spaces

St Paul’s Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture: Spatial Practices is a study of London’s cathedral, its immediate surroundings, and its everyday users in early modern literary and historical documents and images, with a special emphasis on the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Hentschell discusses representations of several of the seemingly discrete spaces of the precinct to reveal how these spaces overlap with and inform one another spatially. She argues that specific locations—including the Paul’s nave (also known as Paul’s Walk), Paul’s Cross pulpit, the bookshops of Paul’s Churchyard, the College of the Minor Canons, Paul’s School, the performance space for the Children of Paul’s, and the fabric of the cathedral itself—should be seen as mutually constitutive and in a dynamic, ever-evolving state. To support this argument, she attends closely to the varied uses of the precinct, including the embodied spatial practices of early modern Londoners and visitors, who moved through the precinct, paused to visit its sacred and secular spaces, and/or resided there. This includes the walkers in the nave, sermon-goers, those who shopped for books, the residents of the precinct, the choristers—who were also schoolboys and actors—and those who were devoted to church repairs and renovations. By attending to the interactions between place and people and to the multiple stories these interactions tell—Hentschell attempts to animate St Paul’s and deepen our understanding of the cathedral and precinct in the early modern period.

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