Garthine Walker - The Extraordinary and the Everyday in Early Modern England [2010][A]

Book Description
Release date: July 6, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0230537243 | ISBN-13: 978-0230537248
This fascinating collection of essays written by renowned and emerging scholars of the early modern period explores the relationship between the extraordinary and the everyday to provide a greater understanding of and new insights into the mental and material worlds of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. By juxtaposing cases that struck early modern people as irregular or strange with things that they found perfectly usual, everyday matters such as household relationships, farting, drinking and exchanging insults are shown to reveal extraordinary aspects of early modern life, while seemingly exceptional events and beliefs -- such as those involving ghosts, prophecies, and cannibalism -- illuminate something of the routine experience of ordinary people. The contributions present not one worldview, nor adopt one way of approaching or illuminating the past. Rather, they demonstrate that categories such as the strange and the commonplace should be and were the subject of constant renegotiation, just as they are now.

Review
'Overall this volume is distinguished by a number of substantial studies, while all the essays at least yield interesting insights and raise intriguing possibilities. They make a fitting tribute.' - Martin Ingram, Brasenose College, Oxford, English Historical Review

About the Authors
ANGELA MCSHANE is Tutor in Postgraduate Studies for the V&A/RCA History of Design program. Her publications include Political Broadside Ballads in Seventeenth-Century England: A Critical Bibliography (2010) and articles on ballads, fashion, drinking cultures and the materiality of popular politics in 17th century England. A monograph, The Political World of the English Broadside Ballad, 1640–1695 is forthcoming.
GARTHINE WALKER is Senior Lecturer in History at Cardiff University. Her publications include Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Writing Early Modern History(Arnold, 2005), and essays and articles on topics ranging from abduction, rape and criminal households to the influence of psychoanalysis and modernisation theory in historical writing.