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Recent Posts
- Review: The Countess (2009)
- Voltaire’s English alter-ego unmasked by new letters
- Seeking the Supernatural: The Exorcisms of John Darrell and the Formation of an Orthodox Identity in Early Modern England
- Warning, Familiarity and Ridicule: Tracing the Theatrical Representation of the Witch in Early Modern England
- English Assimilation and Invasion From Outside the Empire: Problems of the Outsider in England in Bram Stoker’s Dracula
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Articles Archive
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Seeking the Supernatural: The Exorcisms of John Darrell and the Formation of an Orthodox Identity in Early Modern England
Posted on February 1, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis examines the questions raised by Darrell‘s exorcisms and the ways in which they were shaped by relations of power. I hope that it will shed new light on the ways in which people formed their religious and ideological identities in this pivotal period in English history. -
Warning, Familiarity and Ridicule: Tracing the Theatrical Representation of the Witch in Early Modern England
Posted on February 1, 2012 | No CommentsThe image of the witch and the vehicle of the theatre seem to be a natural fit. The spectacle inherent in the supernatural aspects of the witch provided a wealth of vivid opportunities for the employing the latest in scenic and technical advances and for experimenting with the possibilities for new special effects. -
English Assimilation and Invasion From Outside the Empire: Problems of the Outsider in England in Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Posted on February 1, 2012 | No CommentsNo matter how relevant the novel may seem to current readers, it would be foolish to ignore the ways in which Dracula excited emotions in its earliest readers. Late Victorian English citizens would have viewed the novel through a number of different lenses that 21st century readers may be unable to appreciate. -
Constructions of Infanticide in Early Modern England: Female Deviance During Demographic Crisis
Posted on January 31, 2012 | No CommentsNewborn child murder may have been rare in early modern England, but there is little doubt that it happened. Evidence of it exists in the judicial records, as it was criminalized by the legal code. -
Chinoiserie: Revisiting England’s Eighteenth-Century Fantasy of the East
Posted on January 31, 2012 | No CommentsChinoiserie, a French word, is also used in the English language for a seventeenth and eighteenth century European style of ornamentation whose inspiration is entirely Oriental. Spanning centuries, continents and cultures, Chinoiserie explores the clash and fusion of values and perceptions between the East and the West. -
Musicians and Intelligence Operations, 1570-1612: Politics, Surveillance, and Patronage in the Late Tudor and Early Stuart Years
Posted on January 31, 2012 | No CommentsReligious and political upheavals in late Tudor England had markedconsequences on artistic patronage. Although this dissertation is not a comprehensive study of music patronage as it shifted with changing networks of power, I will propose that a form of alternative patronage did emerge with the growth industry in intelligence operations. -
The City of York in the time of Henry VIII
Posted on January 31, 2012 | No CommentsDuring this period, the role of the landed aristocracy was changing. With the creation of a professional standing army, in which soldiers were paid a wage, and the use of foreign mercenaries (think of the Swiss Guard), the traditional military function of the nobility receded. -
Scripture versus Church in the Debate of More and Tyndale
Posted on January 29, 2012 | No CommentsWritten law was given to the people of Israel as their morals got generally corrupted and they became blind to understand the will of God, thus God gave them the Ten Commandements of his his mercy... -
Victorian Governesses : A Look at Education and Professionalization
Posted on January 27, 2012 | No CommentsHistories and fictions explore the lives of Victorian governesses. The governess appeared lonely, depressed, and unwanted, yet thousands of women entered the profession. Victorian governesses experienced changing social and economic conditions. -
Beliefs and Approaches to Death and Dying in Late Seventeenth-Century England
Posted on January 27, 2012 | No CommentsThis study evaluates beliefs and practices of death and dying among Puritans and Arminians in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, from the English Civil War era through the Glorious Revolution. -
Forging a coalition army: William III, the grand alliance, and the confederate army in the Spanish Netherlands, 1688-1697
Posted on January 27, 2012 | No CommentsThe wars against Louis XIV were fought by coalition armies. In the autumn of 1688, Louis’ forces invaded the Palatinate triggering the largest European conflict of the age, a war that would eventually involve — either directly or indirectly — every state in Europe. -
A Crisis in Regal Identity: The Dichotomy Between Levinia Teerlinc’s (1520-1576) Private and Public Images of Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603)
Posted on January 27, 2012 | No CommentsTeerlinc’s career began with an invitation to serve as official court painter to Henry VIII (1491-1547). After his death in 1554, she worked for Edward VI (1547-1553), Mary I (1516-1558), and finally Elizabeth I (1533-1603). -
Courtship and Marriage Rituals in Seventeenth Century England
Posted on January 27, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis will examine the more personal side of courtship and marriage, through the use of seventeenth century diaries and letters. -
Imagining the pain and peril of seventeenth-century childbirth: travail and deliverance in the making of an early modern world
Posted on January 23, 2012 | No CommentsAlice Thornton’s accounts of the pains and perils of childbirth, including this passage on the birth of her fifth child, have attracted the attention of a number of recent historians as particularly detailed and evocative examples of personal testimony to the experience of giving birth in the early modern period. -
English Almanacs and Animal Health Care in the Seventeenth Century
Posted on January 18, 2012 | No CommentsIn seventeenth-century England, the health and welfare of nonhuman animals rested almost solely on the shoulders of their keepers. Veterinary institutions had not yet been founded, and academically trained animal doctors did not exist. -
How Ravens Came to the Tower of London
Posted on January 18, 2012 | No CommentsAccording to popular belief, Charles II of England (reigned 1660-1685) once heard a prophecy that if ravens left the Tower of London it would 'fall', so he ordered that the wings of seven ravens in the Tower be trimmed. -
The Last Nun
Posted on January 17, 2012 | No CommentsOne spring day in 1539, twenty-six women were forced to leave their home— the only home most had known for their entire adult lives. The women were nuns of the Dominican Order of Dartford Priory, in Kent. -
Writing and Re-writing the English Civil War
Posted on January 15, 2012 | No CommentsAlthough not ‘total war’ in the modern sense in which that term has come to be understood – Royalists and Parliamentarians were militant minorities, fighting was seasonal, and some parts of the land were relatively unaffected – the English Civil Wars hit this country with devastating impact. -
‘A Mirror of Men’: Sovereignty, Performance, and Textuality in Tudor England, 1501-1559
Posted on January 14, 2012 | No CommentsSixteenth-century England witnessed both unprecedented generic experimentation in the recording of spectacle and a shift in strategies of sovereign representation and subject formation: it is the central objective of this dissertation to argue for the reciprocal implication of these two phenomena. -
The 1536 Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries: Same Suppression, Different Century
Posted on January 13, 2012 | No CommentsFive hundred years ago, Henry VIII began the demise of monasticism in England. Beginning with the Suppression Act of 1536, and continuing with the Act for the Dissolution of the Greater Monasteries in 1539, monasteries across England were closed. -
English hunger and industrial disorders : a study of social conflict during the first decade of George III’s reign
Posted on January 13, 2012 | No CommentsThis dissertation will argue that while the distress of the industrious poor, which followed sudden fluctuations in food prices and declining employment was the common denominator in the numerous riots of the 1760's, the disorders were merely the surface manifestation of underlying political, economic, social and intellectual ferment which affected all levels of society. -
The Family of Love and the Church of England
Posted on January 13, 2012 | No CommentsOn Oct 3, 1580,a Royal Proclimation was issued entitle, "Ordering Prosecution of the Family of Love". In it the Queen expresses her displeasure at "certain persons which do secretly in corners make privy assemblies of divers simple people unlearned people..." -
Young England : the medieval spirit in an industrial age, 1842-1850
Posted on January 12, 2012 | No CommentsIt cannot be said that Young England left an indelible mark on the legislation or social life of Victorian England. As Disraeli's biographer, E.T. Raymond,,, has remarked, "It left no mark on the statute book. -
British attitudes to the Negro, 1850-1870
Posted on January 12, 2012 | No CommentsThe subjects of this thesis are white not black. Victorian attitudes to race were as much a product of developments in the white world of England as a result of encounters with the black man in the Empire. -
When January 1st Wasn’t the First of the Year
Posted on January 12, 2012 | No CommentsBut strange as it may seem, January 1st did not always signal the beginning of a new calendar year. Until 1752, the two were separate things in England and its colonies. Until that point, people began each calendar year on March 25, which was Annunciation Day—or Lady Day. -
Ashes and ‘the Archive’: The London Fire of 1666, Partisanship, and Proof
Posted on January 7, 2012 | No CommentsThere is little disagreement about the timing or extent of the 'Great Fire,' which was distinguished from the many other, smaller fires that plagued London by its scale. It began 2 September 1666; by some accounts, debris was still smoking in March of 1667. -
The Debate over the Corporeality of Demons in England, c. 1670-1700
Posted on January 6, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis explores a debate which occurred in England during the late seventeenth century. The debate was over whether demons were corporeal or incorporeal. Believers in witchcraft claimed that witches provided proof of demons and those demons were incorporeal substances that could affect the temporal world. -
Gothic Horror, Monstrous Science and Steampunk
Posted on January 3, 2012 | No CommentsUsing a case study of the Steampunk film Van Helsing, the Gothic roots are examined using the inspirational texts Frankenstein and Dracula alongside an analysis of the changing ethos of wonderment toward and faith in “safe” science. -
The Dean and Chapter of Durham, 1558-1603
Posted on January 3, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis provides the first comprehensive study of the role of an Elizabethan Cathedral in society, perhaps doubly significant because it deals with the only diocese in which, according to Dr Collinson, the puritans had 'unfettered control'. -
The development of the British army during the wars with France, 1793-1815
Posted on January 3, 2012 | No CommentsThe British Army that fought the engagement at Waterloo in 1815, was outwardly little changed from that which was engaged in the initial campaigns of the Wars, twenty- two years previously. -
Literature, war and politics, 1642-1668
Posted on January 3, 2012 | No CommentsWhat the two poems could not register (beyond a loaded remark in the Epilogue to the effect that if the play had offended the prince then ‘we’ve now / Three hours done treason here’) was the full extent of the political crisis then unfolding. -
The English Diplomatic Corps, 1649-1660: a comparison Of the diplomats of the Commonwealth and Protectorate and of Charles II
Posted on January 3, 2012 | No CommentsOther historians have conducted prosopographical studies of British diplomats, but no one has studied the diplomats during the time of the Commonwealth and Protectorate. -
Thomas More’s concept of kingship
Posted on January 2, 2012 | No CommentsIn this study, More's concept of kingship is discussed in terms of the Christian humanist views of authority and of the views developed by such Henricians as Thomas Cromwell and Christopher Saint Germain. -
Young-Earth Creationists in Early Nineteenth-century Britain? Towards a reassessment of ‘Scriptural Geology’
Posted on December 29, 2011 | No CommentsThe interventions of biblical literalists in early nineteenth-century geology have been briefly highlighted by Brooke and Cantor as important symptoms of a cultural watershed in need of closer attention. -
The Trial and Execution of Charles I: The First War Crimes Tribunal
Posted on December 27, 2011 | No CommentsOn 30 January 1649, Charles I, King of England was executed for tyranny, treason, and murder. -
Dickens’s Haunted Christmas: The Ethics of the Spectral Text
Posted on December 21, 2011 | No CommentsMarley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. -
The politics of art and religion : Absolutism and Catholic iconography in early Stuart England 1603-1649
Posted on December 21, 2011 | No CommentsThe two Stuart kings, James and Charles, brought important change to England. For inspiration to modernize, James I looked outside of England, a strategy more vigorously pursued by his successor Charles I. -
Working with the body : subjectivity, gender, commodification and the labouring body in Victorian England
Posted on December 20, 2011 | No CommentsThe dissertation’s contrapuntal structure places middle-class texts against working-class texts. -
“Like Spiders’ Webs for Flies”: False Confinement in Nineteenth-Century English Asylums
Posted on December 20, 2011 | No CommentsIn the eighteenth century, many people feared being taken by some unscrupulous person, be he family member, friend, or stranger, to a madhouse to be locked away forever to the detriment of their health, wealth, and sanity. ..By the early nineteenth century, enough legislation had been passed and enough investigations were being carried out that this fear should perhaps not have been so pressing. -
The Creation, Reception and Perpetuation of the Sherlock Holmes Phenomenon, 1887 – 1930
Posted on December 16, 2011 | No CommentsDecember 1887 saw the publication of the first of sixty tales that have immortalized the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. -
A Clash of Wills: Napoleon vs. Wellington, 1808-1815
Posted on December 15, 2011 | No CommentsFor nearly twenty years, Napoleon Bonaparte was the master of Europe. However, as time went on, his enemies gradually learned how to fight and defeat him on the battlefield. One such rival was the Duke of Wellington. -
Victoria’s feminist Legacy: how nineteenth-century women imagined the queen
Posted on December 14, 2011 | No CommentsI am interested in women who inspire their fellow women to challenge gender roles without explicitly being feminists themselves. Examples—real and fictional—as varied as Joan of Arc, Jane Eyre, and Janis Joplin have had a powerful emotional resonance with women, and the fact that they avoid articulating political positions about gender makes them available to a wider audience. -
High crimes: the law of treason in late Stuart Britain
Posted on December 14, 2011 | No CommentsThis is the first work on treason to concentrate exclusively on the all important years between the Restoration and the Union, when the number of trials for this most serious of all crimes reached new heights and during which time the procedural law of treason underwent significant changes. -
The boot and shoe trades in London and Paris in the long eighteenth century
Posted on December 13, 2011 | No CommentsVery different appears to be the Parisian case, where provincial producers flourished only after the mechanisation of the sector. By the 1850s mechanisation meant the beginning of a new phase in the trade. -
`The counterfeit silly curr`: money, politics and the forging of royalist newspapers in the English civil war
Posted on December 13, 2011 | No CommentsConsidering visual,textual,and contextual evidence, as well as literary style and substantive content,I develop in this article methods for distinguishing rivals of Pragmaticus. -
The Royal dockyards in England at the time of the American War of Independence
Posted on December 13, 2011 | No CommentsThe system was at fault. Individuals, such as Lord Sandwich and Charles Middleton, worked hard to keep it going, while trying at the same time to improve it. Fortunately, defeat in the war encouraged the start of this reform in the 1780's. -
The contexts and contours of British economic literature, 1660-1760
Posted on December 12, 2011 | No CommentsIn the century after the Restoration of Charles II there was a remarkable outpouring of thinking about economic issues in Britain, of exploring the ways and means to prosperity and plenty. -
Thomas Cromwell: aspects of his administrative work
Posted on December 12, 2011 | No CommentsThe conclusion attempts to account for the fact that in his administration Cromwell seems to have been guided by contradictory desires (to organise bureaucratically, and to evade bureaucratic organisation in the interests of personal ascendancy), and to assess his place as the founder of modern government in England. -
The First Christmas Tree
Posted on December 11, 2011 | No CommentsAlison Barnes sets the record straight on who was really responsible for introducing this popular custom to Britain. -
Christmas: Its Origin and Associations: Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries
Posted on December 4, 2011 | No CommentsHenceforth, I became a snapper-up of everything relating to Christmastide, utilised every opportunity of searching libraries, bookstalls, and catalogues of books in different parts of the country...