The Extraordinary and the Everyday in Early Modern England: Essays in Celebration of the Work of Bernard Capp

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.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Notes on the Contributors Introduction: The Extraordinary and the Everyday in Early Modern England; A.McShane& G.Walker PART I: THE EXTRAORDINARY IN THE EVERYDAY Bodily Control and Social Unease: The Fart in Seventeenth-Century England; K.Thomas The Ambition of a Young Baronet: Sir Thomas Isham of Lamport, 1657A----1681; A.Fletcher Robert Robertes and Little Cis: an Extraordinary Relationship; R.Houlbrouke Punishing Words: Insults and Injuries, 1525--1700; P.Griffiths The World of Poor Robin's Intelligence: Comedy and Communication in Late Stuart London; D.M.Turner The Strangeness of the Familiar: Witchcraft and the Law in Early Modern England; G.Walker PART II: THE EVERYDAY IN THE EXTRAORDINARY Ann Jeffries and the Fairies: Folk Belief and the War on Scepticism in Later Stuart England; P.Marshall Wyclif's Well: Lollardy, Landscape and Memory in Post-Reformation England; A.Walsham 'Boiled and Stewed with Roots and Herbs': Everyday Tales of Cannibalism in Early Modern Virginia; C.Armstrong Glimpses of the Obscure: the Witch Trials of the Channel Islands; D.Ogier The Extraordinary Case of the Blood-Drinking and Flesh-Eating Cavaliers; A.McShane Mother Shipton and the Devil; D.Oldridge Bleedinge Afreshe'? The Affray and Murder at Nantwich, 19 December 1572; S.Hindle Publications by Professor Bernard Capp, FBA; T.Reinke-Williams Index

About the Author :
ANGELA MCSHANE is Tutor in Postgraduate Studies for the V&A/RCA History of Design programme. 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.