Sunday, February 28, 2010

Adding to Early Modern England's Bibliography

Two works published since the 2nd ed. of Early Modern England and Sources and Debates should be added to the Select Bibliography of our text.
  • The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfillment in Early Modern England, by Keith Thomas (Oxford University Press, 2009) to the Social and Cultural section of both our Tudor and Stuart sections.
  • Global Lives: Britain and the World, 1550–1800, by Miles Ogborn (Cambridge University Press, 2008) to the Europe and Empire section.
These two works might also be mined for further examples of the themes of Early Modern England. To give just two examples, regarding the influence of wealth on markers of status, which previous graced the Great Chain of Being, Thomas finds an Elizabethan satirist who notes that manners take second place to full coffers:
  • Yea, let him cough, hawk, spit and fart, and piss,
  • If he be wealthy, nothing is amiss. (Nicholas Breton, 1600, quoted in Thomas, 113)
And Sir Walter Raleigh on the scaffold, 29 October 1618, noted that his had been
  • a sinful Life, in all sinful Callings, having been a Souldier, a Captain, a Sea-Captain, and a Courtier. (quoted in Ogborn, 37)
Raleigh was reflecting on a courtier's obligation to put up with his betters who "cough, hawk, spit and fart" no doubt.

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