Courtship, Illegitimacy, and Marriage in Early Modern England

Courtship, Illegitimacy, and Marriage in Early Modern England PDF Author: Richard Adair
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719042522
Category : Courtship
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This is a study of bastardy and marriage between the 16th and 18th centuries, exploring the topic from a regional perspective. The book asserts that the very concept of national demographic data is shown to be deeply flawed.

Courtship, Illegitimacy, and Marriage in Early Modern England

Courtship, Illegitimacy, and Marriage in Early Modern England PDF Author: Richard Adair
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719042522
Category : Courtship
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This is a study of bastardy and marriage between the 16th and 18th centuries, exploring the topic from a regional perspective. The book asserts that the very concept of national demographic data is shown to be deeply flawed.

Courtship and Constraint

Courtship and Constraint PDF Author: Diana O'Hara
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719050749
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
The first study of early modern English courtship as a subject in its own right. New historical and anthropological insights into the making of marriage, and an arresting and exciting contribution to the history of the family. Takes the interpretation of the English church court material to a new level of sophistication. Explores new or neglected subjects such as the use of gifts or tokens and the role of go-betweens in English courtship. The fresh and wholly original perspectives on English courtship offered here should redirect and revitalise the history of marriage in early modern England.

Ritual and Conflict: The Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England

Ritual and Conflict: The Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England PDF Author: Adrian Wilson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317062507
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
This book places childbirth in early-modern England within a wider network of social institutions and relationships. Starting with illegitimacy - the violation of the marital norm - it proceeds through marriage to the wider gender-order and so to the ’ceremony of childbirth’, the popular ritual through which women collectively controlled this, the pivotal event in their lives. Focussing on the seventeenth century, but ranging from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, this study offers a new viewpoint on such themes as the patriarchal family, the significance of illegitimacy, and the structuring of gender-relations in the period.

Manhood in Early Modern England

Manhood in Early Modern England PDF Author: Elizabeth A Foyster
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317884272
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This is the first book to focus on the relationships which men formed with their wives in early modern England, making it an important contribution to a new understanding of English, social, family, and gender history. Dr Foyster redresses the balance of historical research which has largely concentrated on the public lives of prominent men. The book looks at youth and courtship before marriage, male fears of their wives' gossip and sexual betrayal, and male friendships before and after marriage. Highlighted throughout is the importance of sexual reputation. Based on both legal records and fictional sources, this is a fascinating insight into the personal lives of ordinary men and women in early modern England.

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.

Illegitimacy and the National Family in Early Modern England

Illegitimacy and the National Family in Early Modern England PDF Author: Helen Vella Bonavita
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317118936
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
This study considers the figure of the bastard in the context of analogies of the family and the state in early modern England. The trope of illegitimacy, more than being simply a narrative or character-driven issue, is a vital component in the evolving construction and representation of British national identity in prose and drama of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Through close reading of a range of plays and prose texts, the book offers readers new insight into the semiotics of bastardy and concepts of national identity in early modern England, and reflects on contemporary issues of citizenship and identity. The author examines play texts of the period including Bale's King Johan, Peele's The Troublesome Reign of John, and Shakespeare's King John, Richard II, and King Lear in the context of a selection of legal, religious, and polemical texts. In so doing, she illuminates the extent to which the figure of the bastard and, more generally the trope of illegitimacy, existed as a distinct discourse within the wider discursive framework of family and nation.

A Cultural History of Marriage in the Renaissance and Early Modern Age

A Cultural History of Marriage in the Renaissance and Early Modern Age PDF Author: Joanne M. Ferraro
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350103195
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Why marry? The personal question is timeless. Yet the highly emotional desires of men and women during the period between 1450 and 1650 were also circumscribed by external forces that operated within a complex arena of sweeping economic, demographic, political, and religious changes. The period witnessed dramatic religious reforms in the Catholic confession and the introduction of multiple Protestant denominations; the advent of the printing press; European encounters and exchange with the Americas, North Africa, and southwestern and eastern Asia; the growth of state bureaucracies; and a resurgence of ecclesiastical authority in private life. These developments, together with social, religious, and cultural attitudes, including the constructed norms of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality, impinged upon the possibility of marrying. The nine scholars in this volume aim to provide a comprehensive picture of current research on the cultural history of marriage for the years between 1450 and 1650 by identifying both the ideal templates for nuptial unions in prescriptive writings and artistic representation and actual practices in the spheres of courtship and marriage rites, sexual relationships, the formation of family networks, marital dissolution, and the overriding choices of individuals over the structural and cultural constraints of the time. A Cultural History of Marriage in the Renaissance and Early Modern Age presents an overview of the period with essays on Courtship and Ritual; Religion, State and Law; Kinship and Social Networks; the Family Economy; Love and Sex; the Breaking of Vows; and Representations of Marriage.

Privacy, Domesticity, and Women in Early Modern England

Privacy, Domesticity, and Women in Early Modern England PDF Author: Corinne S. Abate
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135190874X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
The ten essays in this collection explore the discrete yet overlapping female spaces of privacy and domesticity in early modern England. While other literary critics have focused their studies of female privacy on widows, witches, female recusants and criminals, the contributors to this collection propose that the early modern subculture of femaleness is more expansive and formative than is typically understood. They maintain that the subculture includes segregated, sometimes secluded, domestic places for primarily female activities like nursing, sewing, cooking, and caring for children and the sick. It also includes hidden psychological realms of privacy, organized by women's personal habits, around intimate friendships or kinship, and behind institutional powerlessness. The texts discussed in the volume include plays not only by Shakespeare but also Ford, Wroth, Marvell, Spenser and Cavendish, among others. Through the lens of literature, contributors consider the unstructured, fluid quality of much everyday female experience as well as the dimensions, symbols, and the ever-changing politics and culture of the household. They analyze the complex habits of female settings-the verbal, spatial, and affective strategies of early-modern women's culture, including private rituals, domestic practices, and erotic attachments-in order to provide a broader picture of female culture and of female authority. The authors argue-through a range of critical approaches that include feminist, historical, and psychoanalytic-that early modern women often transformed their confinement into something useful and necessary, creating protected and even sacred spaces with their own symbols and aesthetic.

Ritual and Conflict: The Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England

Ritual and Conflict: The Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England PDF Author: Adrian Wilson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317062493
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
This book places childbirth in early-modern England within a wider network of social institutions and relationships. Starting with illegitimacy - the violation of the marital norm - it proceeds through marriage to the wider gender-order and so to the ’ceremony of childbirth’, the popular ritual through which women collectively controlled this, the pivotal event in their lives. Focussing on the seventeenth century, but ranging from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, this study offers a new viewpoint on such themes as the patriarchal family, the significance of illegitimacy, and the structuring of gender-relations in the period.

Blood, Bodies and Families in Early Modern England

Blood, Bodies and Families in Early Modern England PDF Author: Patricia Crawford
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317876865
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This collection of essays contains a wealth of information on the nature of the family in the early modern period. This is a core topic within economic and social history courses which is taught at most universities. This text gives readers an overview of how feminist historians have been interpreting the history of the family, ever since Laurence Stone's seminal work FAMILY, SEX AND MARRIAGE IN ENGLAND 1500-1800 was published in 1977. The text is divided into three coherent parts on the following themes: bodies and reproduction; maternity from a feminist perspective; and family relationships. Each part is prefaced by a short introduction commenting on new work in the area. This book will appeal to a wide variety of students because of its sociological, historical and economic foci.