DOCSLIB.ORG

Public Voices, Private Closets, and Naked Truth: the Pamphlet Wars, 1640-1660

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Public Voices, Private Closets, and Naked Truth: the Pamphlet Wars, 1640-1660 Public Voices, Private Closets, and Naked Truth: The Pamphlet Wars, 1640-1660 Georgia Lee Wilder A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Enylish University of Toronto @ Copyright by Georgia Lee Wilder ZOO0 Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. rw WemW Ottawa ON K1A ON1 WONKlAW Canada CaMda The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, disttibuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/6ilm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or othewise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. To my partner. Anna and to my parents. Jim and Barbara McBride Georgia Lee Wilder ZOO0 Public Voices. Private Closets, and Naked Truth: The Pamphlet Wars. 1 640- 1 660 Doctoral Thesis. 2000 Graduate Department of English by Georgia Lee Wilder Abstract In 1640. George A. Thornason. perceiving that he lived in interesting times. attempted to colIect every pamphlet which the presses produced. Censorship collapsed the following year. In an unprecedented printculture revolution. women and nien îkom a wide range of social backgrounds and ideologicd perspectives entered into a war of words. As this pamphlet warfare is fimdamentally dialogic, my thesis investigates a wide range of printed ephemera with emphasis on texts which occasioned an extended series of responses. To its participants. the levelling of the press engendered anarchy and babble. In Bak ht i nian terms. this pamphlet warfare constitutes heteroglossia. The tendency of respondents to utilize each other's rhetoric. however, created a dependency on shared tropes and images. with the human body. ofien feminized or transgendered, being a common figure for the timcs. 1 argue that the body becomes the dominant literary iopos of this factioned state. My Introduction notes that the pamphlet wars are tiequently dismissed as a literary aberration, and reconsiders the value of the aberrant. Chapter 1 addresses the perception that civil war pamphlets are anti-literary products of a unified 'Puritan' agenda. and acknowledges the critical repositioning of civil war literature within this past decade. This chapter outlines some rhetorical innovations of the pamphlet wars. discussing tigurations of the body in the pamphlet genre. Chapter 2 focuses on images of the transgendered body. and traces the politicization of gendering from Jacobean fashion debates through 10 interregnum satires. Chapter 3 investigates the politics of early modem cooking manuals. Using the titular conceit of a 'closet opened' or 'cabinet unlocked.' cookbooks promise to expose the female body and its private space to the public gaze. Chapter 4. by contrast. discusses vying masculinities. In debates regarding monarchy versus constitutional govemment. the body politic becomes an ailegory featuring a (male) ruling head and its (female) govemed body In Chapter 5.1 argue that Milton's Presbyterian detracton equate his divorce tracts with a 'domestic violence' which creates faction and schism in the body poiitic. Under the aegis of Crornweil's tolerationism. Utopian socialists levelled the body politic, refusing to subordinate to any head that was determined either by gender or estate. My Conclusion points to Restoration imperatives to re-embody masculine. monarchical authonty, and reinvent the boundaries of female space. Acknowledgements 1 would first Iike to thank Professor A. H. de Quehen. who has been a superb supervisor. Professors Michael Dixon and Mary Nyquist. who formed my advisory cornmittee, have also been enomously attentive throughout every stage of this project. 1 am doubly indebted to Professor Dixon, who has supported my endeavoun as both a member of my cornmittee. and as the Director of Graduate Studies in English. As well. 1 would like to extend a very special Thank You to Professor Nyquist for entrusting me with her unpublished work. and for her friendship and support while we were in Wales. Working with this committee has ken both a privilege and a pleasure. 1 would also Iike to thank Professor Heather Campbell, my extemal examiner, for responding to my work with such interest, enthusiasm. and attention to detail. Throughout my studies at the University of Toronto, 1 have also been guided by the wisdom and thoughtfihess of Professor Emeritus F.T. Flahiff. 1 am extremely gratetùl to a11 those who shared their expertise, and expressed their confidence in my abilities and ideas. 1 hope that in- the cornpletion of this project 1 have fûlfilled their expectations. Funding for my graduate studies has ken provided by Ontario Graduate Scholarships, the University of Toronto English Department. and the School of Graduate Studies. 1 would especially like to thank Sharon Walton and Cecilia Martino. who have frequently gone beyond the cd1 of duty to organize and expedite the enormous flow of papework which has made this endeavour possible. In the process of researching my topic. Professor Joseph Black at the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies. Toronto. the librarians at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the micro-text staff at Robarts Library. were extremely helpful. A11 images which 1 have reproduced in this dissertation are fiom micro-text. and 1 am very grateful to University Microfilms international for having the opportunity to utilize their resources. Throughout my years as a student at the University of Toronto. 1 have had many outstanding mentors, fiends. and colleagues. 1 would like to express rny admiration of Dn. Mark McDayter, Chantel Lavoie, Susan Glover. Tanya Wood. and David Tortell. who have been my role models in graduate studies. and who have been extrernely generous with their time and ideas. Joan Rawlins and Ned Djordjevic deserve outstanding thanks for editing and proof-reading rny thesis, and for providing me with their expert advice. Any emors which remain are, of course. my own. Finaliy, and most importantly. 1 would Iike to thank Anna Gutmanis for her love, patience, intelligent insights, and constant encouragement - and for tenaciously enduring some difficult times x, that we cmnow ceiebrate together. Preface My primary resource for printed ephemera is the Thomason Tracts ( 1640- 166 1), available through microtext facsimiles. AI1 citations from the Thomason coIIection are followed by the catalogue number. Where texts cited predate the Thomason Tracts. 1 have viewed the works catalogued by Pollard and Redgrave, and have prefaced the short-title catalogue number with STC. For works which Thomason omitted, or texts published after 166 1. 1 have cited the second edition of the Donald Wing shon-title catalogue. and indicated the Wing number. In cases where more than one copy of a text exists, 1 have attempted to cite the copy which is most complete and legible. Frontispiece illustrations and title pages. for example. tend not to be available on al1 extant copies. Where possible, 1 have exarnined original texts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, or at the Fisher Rare Book Library and the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, Toronto. 1 have noted the location of these holdings in my bibliography. I have preserved original spellings. but replaced the -long s' with "S." and "Wwith "W." 1 have retained capitaiization and italics within quotations. but amended titles to conform to MLA style. 1 have also altered the Lady Day dating to represent the year as begiming January 1. As pamphleteers frequently use anomalous spellings- improper ternis. and colloquid language in wordplay, 1 have inserted 'sic' only in instances where a typographical error interferes with the sense of the text. In cases where the text provides a putative author. 1 have listed the text under that name, even if it pseudonymous. Where Thomason provides an anribution, 1 have followed his attribution, and cross-indexed it with any corresponding pseudonyms. 1 have not followed Donald Wing's attributions unless an entry in the Stationer's Register or modem scholarly evidence confins the attribution. Table of Contents Abstract Acknowledgements Preface vi Table of Contents vii List of Illustrations viii List of Abbreviations i x Introduction: Aberrant Literature, 1640-1660 1 Chapter 1. The Pamphlet Wars: Heteroglossia and Critical Utopian Socialism 8 Chapter 2. This Body is Not a Lovesong: Public Voices and Uncivil Wars 53 Chapter 3. Private Closets, Secret Recipes. and Monstrous Appetites 100 Chapter 4. Masculine Constitutions: The Naked Truth 148 Chapter 5. Divorce and the Levelled Body 183 Conclusion: Response Texts and Restoration 23 1 Appendix 1. John Taylor and The Parlament of Women ( 1640): An Attribution 236 Bibliography 243 vii List of Illustrations Figure 1 "The Rebellion of the Hands and Feet" ( 165 1) Figure 2 A Deciaration of a Strange and Wondertul 1 ,Monster ( 1 646) Figure 3 The Ranters Monster ( 1652) Figure 4 John Taylor. Mad Fashions (1 642)
Load more

Recommended publications
  • It's a (Two-)Culture Thing: the Laterial Shift to Liberation
    Animal Issues, Vol 4, No. 1, 2000 It's a (Two-)Culture Thing: The Lateral Shift to Liberation Barry Kew rom an acute and, some will argue, a harsh, a harsh, fantastic or even tactically naive F naive perspective, this article examines examines animal liberation, vegetarianism vegetarianism and veganism in relation to a bloodless culture ideal. It suggests that the movement's repeated anomalies, denial of heritage, privileging of vegetarianism, and other concessions to bloody culture, restrict rather than liberate the full subversionary and revelatory potential of liberationist discourse, and with representation and strategy implications. ‘Only the profoundest cultural needs … initially caused adult man [sic] to continue to drink cow milk through life’.1 In The Social Construction of Nature, Klaus Eder develops a useful concept of two cultures - the bloody and the bloodless. He understands the ambivalence of modernity and the relationship to nature as resulting from the perpetuation of a precarious equilibrium between the ‘bloodless’ tradition from within Judaism and the ‘bloody’ tradition of ancient Greece. In Genesis, killing entered the world after the fall from grace and initiated a complex and hierarchically-patterned system of food taboos regulating distance between nature and culture. But, for Eder, it is in Israel that the reverse process also begins, in the taboo on killing. This ‘civilizing’ process replaces the prevalent ancient world practice of 1 Calvin. W. Schwabe, ‘Animals in the Ancient World’ in Aubrey Manning and James Serpell, (eds), Animals and Human Society: Changing Perspectives (Routledge, London, 1994), p.54. 1 Animal Issues, Vol 4, No. 1, 2000 human sacrifice by animal sacrifice, this by sacrifices of the field, and these by money paid to the sacrificial priests.2 Modern society retains only a very broken connection to the Jewish tradition of the bloodless sacrifice.
    [Show full text]
  • Pierre Gassendi's Animals
    [Intellectual History Archive 3, 2018] Begley, Pierre Gassendi’s Animals PIERRE GASSENDI’S ANIMALS: A CASE OF EXCLUSION Justin Begley1 University of Helsinki I. Introduction: A Learned Vegetarian The French priest, professor of mathematics, historian, and philosopher, Pierre Gassendi, was perhaps the most influential and well-respected thinkers of his day. 2 While the linguistic and conceptual complexity of his Latin tomes excluded him from the philosophical canon that was formed during the late eighteenth, historians are now beginning to appreciate just how central his ideas were to the development of early modern intellectual life. But recent studies of Gassendi have consistently bypassed a major component of his thought: his defense of a vegetarian diet.3 Conversely, because it is no small task to identify and translate the relevant passages from Gassendi’s oeuvre, historical surveys of vegetarianism have mostly neglected his arguments. Indeed, in the history of vegetarianism, emphasis has been placed on religious sectarians or intellectual outsiders such as Thomas Bushnell and Roger Crab, while figures such as Gassendi who were, historically speaking, intellectual insiders have paradoxically been neglected. 4 Proponents of vegetarianism have thus been shaped teleologically as progressive or even “radical” thinkers. But Gassendi remained thoroughly embedded in the institutions of his day, and channeled the full gamut of humanist apparatuses in his endeavor to integrate the philosophy of the ancient Greek atomist, Epicurus, into the university curriculum. For this purpose, he sought to cleanse Epicurean philosophy of its popular associations with excess, atheism, and debauchery 1 [email protected] 2 Meric Casaubon, Generall Learning: A Seventeenth-Century Treatise on the Formation of the General Scholar, ed.
    [Show full text]
  • A Diet for a Sensitive Soul: Vegetarianism in Eighteenth-Century Britain
    A Diet for a Sensitive Soul: Vegetarianism in Eighteenth-Century Britain Anita Guerrini While vegetarianism has a long history in Western culture, it reemerged forcefully in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain. Three main motivations for vegetarianism converged in this period: religious, medical, and moral. In addition, a vegetarian diet entered mainstream medical and popular thought in the works of the physician George Cheyne. By the time of Joseph Ritson's Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food in 1802, however, vegetarianism was about to rejoin the irrational fringe, exemplified in the nineteenth century by Sylvester Graham and his followers. 1 In this essay, I shall focus on three vegetarians of the period: the radical hatter Thomas Tryon (1634-1703), George Cheyne (1671-1743), and the man of letters Joseph Ritson (1752-1803). Cheyne's work, especially his Essay of Health and Long Life (1724) and The English Malady (1733), defined the nascent concept of the sensitive character and explicitly connected it to diet and lifestyle. To Cheyne, a vegetarian diet was preeminently a diet for the sensitive soul. Over the century, the sensitive soul negotiated a path from the overtly religious Tryon to the covertly religious Cheyne to the professedly antireligious Ritson. To each, in addition, vegetarianism was part of a wider critique of contemporary society. Tryon was one of a number of religiously motivated vegetarians in the period following the English Civil War. 2 The context of his ideas can be delineated by examining an earlier
    [Show full text]
  • Tristram Stuart
    A note from the author: Below are two word separate extracts. The first is from The Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to Modern Times; the second is an extract from Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal. I have preceded the first with a quote from Zizek, chosen to provoke some thoughts about what I am up to in both very different works. Tristram Stuart "To demand consistency at strategically selected points where the system cannot afford to be consistent is to put pressure on the entire system. The art of politics lies in making particular demands which, while thoroughly realistic, strike at the core of hegemonic ideology and imply a much more radical change. ... A political movement begins with an idea, something to strive for... Once people get deeply engaged in it, they become aware that much more than meeting their initial demand would be needed to bring about true justice." Slavoj Žižek, LRB, 18 July 2013 [Extract of ch. 27 ‘The Malthusian Tragedy: Feeding the World’, The Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to Modern Times, Norton 2007] … Mushrooming populations were threatening to outstrip food-production. Britain had doubled in the eighteenth-century from about five million to nearly ten million people. When food shortages struck in Europe during the 1790s and 1800s, concern became all the more intense. Was misery and starvation the future of humanity? In the quest to resolve this crisis, improving land-use efficiency became a national obsession. Robert Southey’s critique of vegetarianism was again undoubtedly instrumental in providing a focus for Lambe, Newton and Shelley: ‘The principle of abstaining from animal food is not in itself either culpable or ridiculous, if decently discussed’, Southey conceded, ‘But ultimately it resolves itself into the political question, Whether the greater population can be maintained upon animal or vegetable diet?’ Large populations were regarded as desirable in themselves.
    [Show full text]
  • Durham E-Theses
    Durham E-Theses Gender in British Behmenist thought Gibbons, Brian John How to cite: Gibbons, Brian John (1993) Gender in British Behmenist thought, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/5730/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk Brian John Gibbons "Gender in British Behmenist Thought" Ph. D. Thesis University of Durham 1993 In the early modern period, women were commonly regarded as unruly and morally suspect beings. During the period, however, there was a revision in the moral status of women. Behmenism is representative of the process whereby women were raised to the status of morally elevating beings. In Jacob Boehme's theosophy, both the godhead and prelapsarian man have a feminine element, the Virgin Sophia; women are a sort of fallen counterpart to Sophia. The emphasis of early Behmenists, such as John Pordage, was on Sophia's passivity and chastity.
    [Show full text]
  • Judaizing and Singularity in England, 1618-1667
    Judaizing and Singularity in England, 1618-1667 Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Aidan Francis Cottrell-Boyce, Gonville and Caius College, June 2018. For Anna. Abstract In the seventeenth century, in England, a remarkable number of small, religious movements began adopting demonstratively Jewish ritual practices. They were labelled by their contemporaries as Judaizers. Typically, this phenomenon has been explained with reference to other tropes of Puritan practical divinity. It has been claimed that Judaizing was a form of Biblicism or a form of millenarianism. In this thesis, I contend that Judaizing was an expression of another aspect of the Puritan experience: the need to be recognized as a ‘singular,’ positively- distinctive, separated minority. Contents Introduction 1 Singularity and Puritanism 57 Judaizing and Singularity 99 ‘A Jewish Faccion’: Anti-legalism, Judaizing and the Traskites 120 Thomas Totney, Judaizing and England’s Exodus 162 The Tillamites, Judaizing and the ‘Gospel Work of Separation’ 201 Conclusion 242 Introduction During the first decades of the seventeenth century in England, a remarkable number of small religious groups began to adopt elements of Jewish ceremonial law. In London, in South Wales, in the Chilterns and the Cotswolds, congregations revived the observation of the Saturday Sabbath.1 Thomas Woolsey, imprisoned for separatism, wrote to his co-religionists in Amsterdam to ‘prove it unlawful to eat blood and things strangled.’2 John Traske and his followers began to celebrate Passover
    [Show full text]
  • LA CUCINA MEDIEVALE E RINASCIMENTALE 1 Gli Alimenti
    Volume LA CUCINA MEDIEVALE 1 E RINASCIMENTALE INDICE 1 Gli alimenti I diversi regimi alimentari 2 I cibi 3 PAROLA DI CUOCO Come preparare il prosciutto cotto 3 APPROFONDIMENTO Il rito guerriero della caccia 4 APPROFONDIMENTO La Scuola medica salernitana 8 Le bevande 9 FONTI Precetti dei Tacuina sanitatis 10 Proposte di lavoro 11 2 In cucina I luoghi e i metodi di preparazione dei cibi 12 La conservazione degli alimenti 14 PAROLA DI CUOCO La prima ricetta in italiano del sorbetto 16 Le preparazioni a base di cereali 17 FONTI Tre tipi di pane 17 Cuochi e ricettari 20 APPROFONDIMENTO Il valore documentario dei ricettari 22 Proposte di lavoro 23 3 In tavola I servizi 24 La mise en place: la preparazione della tavola 25 APPROFONDIMENTO Novità e inconvenienti per i commensali 26 I banchetti: ostentazione di lusso e potere 27 FONTI Un banchetto memorabile 29 I professionisti dei banchetti 30 FONTI Per essere un bravo scalco 31 Proposte di lavoro 32 1 1 Gli alimenti I diversi regimi alimentari LA MENSA DEI RICCHI E QUELLA DEI POVERI Nel Medioevo l’alimentazione dei ricchi e dei poveri era ovviamente diversa, ma non così diversa come diventerà in segui- to: a differenziarla era più la quantità che la qualità. In entrambi i casi, essa cambia- va in base al clima, alle varietà delle risorse disponibili nel territorio, agli eventi storici (come guerre e carestie) e al calendario liturgico, che prevedeva precise restrizioni in alcuni periodi dell’anno, come per esempio durante la Quaresima. La biforcazione sociale tra le mense prese avvio in epoca carolingia, quando i disboscamenti realizzati per aumentare le aree agricole ridussero le superfici fore- stali e i boschi cominciarono a essere riservati all’uso dei potenti, per cui la selvag- gina (cervi, cinghiali ecc.) divenne un’esclusiva delle mense dei signori, mentre i contadini al massimo potevano disporre degli animali da cortile.
    [Show full text]
  • 2020 Plant-Based State of the Industry Report
    State of the Industry Report | Plant-Based Meat, Eggs, and Dairy 1 Table of Contents — Executive summary 6 Section 1: Introduction 9 Section 2: Commercial landscape 11 Overview and major developments 11 A note on Covid-19 in the United States 12 Figure 1: Sales growth of plant-based meat and animal-based meat in 2020 over 2019 12 Retail product launches 13 Box 1: Plant-based meat works toward price parity 15 Figure 2: U.S. consumers: barriers to eating plant-based meat products (March 2020)16 Figure 3: U.S., German, and British consumers: factors that would lead to interest in trying plant-based meat (August 2020) 17 Top-selling plant-based meat and dairy brands in U.S. retail 24 Table 1: Top 10 plant-based meat brands by dollar sales in U.S. retail (alphabetized) 24 Table 2: Top 10 plant-based dairy brands by dollar sales in U.S. retail (alphabetized) 27 Foodservice partnerships and expansion 28 Box 2: Co-branding in foodservice 30 Early-stage companies 31 Table 3: Top 10 plant-based food producer fundraising rounds of 2020 31 Developments in the upstream supply chain 32 Section 3: Sales 37 U.S. retail sales overview 37 Box 3: U.S. retail market data collection 37 Figure 4: Total U.S. retail plant-based food market 38 Figure 5: U.S. retail plant-based food dollar sales by category 38 Figure 6: U.S. retail plant-based dollar share of total category 39 Plant-based purchasing dynamics 39 Box 4: U.S. consumer panel data collection 39 Figure 7: Household penetration of plant-based products 41 U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • The Ultramind Solution Companion Guide
    The Simple Way to Defeat Depression, Overcome Anxiety, and Sharpen Your Mind THE ULT RAMIND SOLutION COMPANION GUIDE Fix Your Broken Brain by Healing Your Body First M ARK HYMAN, M. D. The –––––––––––– UltraMind –––––––––––– Solution Companion Guide By Mark Hyman, M.D. The UltraMind Solution Companion Guide Copyright © 2009 UltraWellness, LLC This publication contains the opinions and ideas of the author. It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subjects addressed in the publication. It is provided with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering medical, health, psychological, or any other kind of personal professional services in the book. If the reader requires personal medical, health, or other assistance or advice, a competent professional should be consulted. The author and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, that is incurred as a consequence, directly, or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this guide. CONTENTS Introduction: How to Use The UltraMind Solution Companion Guide ....................................................... 2 Section 1: The UltraMind Quizzes .................................................................................................................. 4 Section 2: Set the Stage for Success ............................................................................................................ 34 Section 3: The Preparation Week— Preparing Mind,
    [Show full text]
  • A History of Veganism from 1806
    1 World Veganism – past, present, and future By John Davis, former IVU Manager and Historian A collection of blogs © John Davis 2010-12 Introduction This PDF e-book is about 8mb, 219 pages A4, (equivalent to 438 page paperback book), so I strongly recommend that you save a copy to your own disk, then open it in the Adobe Acrobat Reader. That way, you won’t have to download it all again if you want to read more of it sometime later. Creating this as a PDF e-book has several advantages, especially if you are reading this on a device connected to the internet. For example: - in the blog about interviews on SMTV, just click on the links to watch the videos - in the bibliography click to read a complete scan of an original very old book. - on the contents page click a link to go direct to any item, then click ‘back to top’. - you can also, of course, use other features such as search, zoom etc. etc. - a great advance on printed books… It should work on any device, though an ipad/tablet is ideal for this as there are lots of big colour photos, or on smart-phones try rotating for best results, on a larger computer monitor try view/page display/two up, to read it like a book. The blogs were posted weekly from February 2010 to December 2012 and each is self- contained, with the assumption that readers might not have seen any of the others. So feel free to start anywhere, and read them in any order, no need to read from the beginning.
    [Show full text]
  • The Politics of Diet in Early Modern English Literature Andrea Crow
    Ruling Appetites: The Politics of Diet in Early Modern English Literature Andrea Crow Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 © 2018 Andrea Crow All rights reserved ABSTRACT Ruling Appetites: The Politics of Diet in Early Modern English Literature Andrea Crow Ruling Appetites: The Politics of Diet in Early Modern English Literature reveals how eating became inseparable from political and social identity in the early modern English imaginary, and the instrumental role that poets, playwrights, and polemicists played in shaping a growing perception of diet as a primary means of driving social change. From the late Elizabethan period through the Restoration, recurrent harvest failures and unstable infrastructure led to widespread food insecurity and even starvation across England. At once literary producers and concerned social agents, many major early modern authors were closely engaged with some of the worst hunger crises in English history. The pointed and detailed attention to food in early modern literature, from luxurious banquets to bare cupboards, I argue, arose from real concerns over the problem of hunger facing the country. I demonstrate how authors developed literary forms seeking to explain and respond to how changing dietary habits and food distribution practices were reshaping their communities. Moreover, early modern authors turned to food not just as a topical referent or as a metaphorical vehicle but rather as a structural concern that could be materially addressed through literary means. Each chapter of “Ruling Appetites” centers on particular literary techniques—verse forms, stage characters, theatrical set pieces, or narrative tropes—through which authors examined how food influenced economic, social, and political reality.
    [Show full text]
  • The Circulation of Quaker Texts, 1650-1700
    Compelling Reading: The Circulation of Quaker Texts, 1650-1700 Brooke Sylvia Palmieri A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at University College London September 2017 !1 !2 I, Brooke Sylvia Palmieri, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. !3 !4 Abstract This is a work about the publications and archival habits of a radical minori- ty. The Quakers organised themselves around reading, writing, archiving, and publication— activities in which every member was expected to partici- pate. The paradox of these activities is that while they focused upon indi- vidual spiritual development, they were dependent upon and tested by in- tensely collaborative authorship and communal reading. Reading amongst Friends was an element of their spiritual identity, and also a direct inheri- tance of changes in information production and circulation triggered during the Civil Wars of the 1640s. Over time, Quaker reading practices changed along with the publications they produced and circulated, especially at the onset of state-sanctioned persecution during the Restoration. Publications, which initially featured Quaker leaders as authors, extended to include the testimonies of the broader membership experiencing persecution. Alternate readings of Quaker texts fuelled the doctrinal disputes between members. So too did the makeup of membership change, widening audiences, attract- ing scholars on the one hand, and non-English speakers on the other. With- in current scholarship on the history of reading, Quakers show how individ- ual readings developed in a communal environment.
    [Show full text]