To present-day eyes, the beliefs of earlier eras can appear bizarre and absurd; the products of ‘ignorance’ or ‘superstition’.  This is certainly the case for early modern understandings of the human body. Crucially, however, these seemingly irrational ideas were often based on careful study and complex systems of thought.  Indeed, the ways in which people in previous ages thought about the body can tell us a great deal about how they saw the world around them and their own place within it. With that in mind, this course will examine a range of beliefs about the body in Britain from 1500 to 1700. This will include attitudes to healing and medicine, heaven, hell and purgatory, monsters and monstrous births, ghosts and witches, and the use of prophecy. Focussing primarily on England, but drawing on the wider British and European contexts where relevant, we will examine what these so-called ‘aberrations’ can reveal about how ideas of ‘common sense’ and ‘normality’ have changed over time. 

• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of unusual beliefs and practices relating to the body in early modern Britain.
• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of a range of approaches used to identify and interpret unusual beliefs and practices relating to the body in early modern Britain.

• Demonstrate the ability to extract information on early modern beliefs about the body from relevant sources and then analyse and evaluate it.
• Demonstrate the ability to use information from class and independent research to construct an academically-sound argument.

The module will be delivered as three Saturday schools.  Sessions will consist of a mixture of informal lectures, audio-visual resources, class discussion and group work on specific topics relating to the module. The discussion and group work will enable the students to think critically and contribute to the debates and topics presented during the lectures. Students will also be expected to read relevant printed material and use that as the basis for contributions in class. The discussion-led sessions and the lectures themselves will be supplemented by internet resources available to the students via blackboard

• The ability to communicate ideas and arguments effectively, whether in class discussion or in written form
• The ability to work effectively with others in groups and to learn collaboratively through discussion and interaction
• The ability to think critically, analyse sources, evaluate arguments, and challenge assumptions.
• The ability to formulate and justify their own arguments and conclusions and present appropriate supporting evidence
• The ability to locate relevant resources in the library and online and use them appropriately in academic work
• The ability to use a range of information technology resources to assist  with information retrieval and assignment presentation
• The ability to independently organise study methods, manage time effectively, and prioritise workload to meet deadlines

Formative assessment / feedback will occur on a weekly basis through class discussion and group work.

Type of assessment

%

Contribution

Title

Duration
(if applicable)

Approx. date of Assessment

Assignment 1

(Source criticism)

30%

Exact nature of task will vary from year to year

500 words

Week 2

Assignment 2

(Essay)

70%

Exact nature of task will vary from year to year

1000 words

A fortnight after final session

Session 1 – Early modern bodies and monsters

Welcome and introductions. Why study the unusual?  Definitions and concepts.  General early modern historical background.

Medicine and the Body. Early modern medicine, learned and popular.  Theories of the body and healing. Monsters: causes of monsters, understanding monstrous births

Session 2 – Ghosts, spirits and witches

Ghost stories & the doctrine of purgatory, including changes as a result of the Reformation. Supernatural bodies and physical presence.  Approaches to the study of witchcraft. Beliefs about witches with focus on the bodies of witches, witch trials. 

Session 3 – Prophecy and rationality

Types of prophecy and their uses, acceptance and rejection of specific prophecies and prophets.  Religion and rationality.  Changes in interpretations of the unusual and ideas about ‘rationality’ over the course of 1500-1700 and beyond. Review of course: then and now

Essential Reading

Manfred Brod, ‘Politics and prophecy in seventeenth-century England: the case of Elizabeth Poole’, Albion, Vol.  31, 3 (1999), pp. 395–412.

David Cressy, Agnes Bowker’s Cat: Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 2001).

Andrew Joynes, Medieval Ghost Stories: An Anthology of Miracles, Marvels, and Prodigies (Woodbridge, 2001).

Darren Oldridge, Strange Histories (London, 2005).

Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London, 1994).

Kevin Stagg, ‘The Body’ in Garthine Walker (ed.), Writing Early Modern History (London, 2005), 205-26.

Further reading

Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1997).

Stuart Clark (ed.) Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture (London, 2000).

Esther Cohen, ‘Law, Folklore and Animal Law’, Past & Present, No.110 (1986), 6-37.

Peter Erickson and Clark Hulse (eds), Early Modern Visual Culture : Representation, Race, And Empire in Renaissance England (Philadelphia, 2000).

Edward Evans, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals (London, 1906).

Alistair Fox, ‘Prophecies and politics in the reign of Henry VIII’, in Alistair Fox and John Guy (eds.), Reassessing the Henrician Age (Oxford, 1986).

Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall (eds), The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2000).

Laura Gowing, ‘The Haunting of Susan Lay: Servants and Mistresses in Seventeenth century England’, Gender & History, Vol. 14(2), 2002.

Darryll Grantley and Nina Taunton (eds), The Body in Late Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Aldershot, 2000).

Sasha Handley, ‘Reclaiming ghosts in 1690s England’, Studies in Church History, 41 (2005), pp. 345-55.

Robert Hole, ‘Incest, consanguinity and a monstrous birth in rural England, January 1600’, Social History, 25, 2000, 183-99.

Mary Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1999).

Darren Oldridge, The Devil in Early Modern England (Stroud, 2000).

K. Park & L. Daston, ‘Unnatural conceptions: the study of monsters in sixteenth and seventeenth-century France and England’, Past & Present, No. 92 (1981), 20–54.

Martin Porter, Windows of the Soul: Physiognomy in European Culture 1470-1780 (Oxford, 2005).

Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth Century Representations (London and New York, 1996)

Ulinka Rublack, The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany (Oxford, 1999).

Garthine Walker (ed.), Writing Early Modern History (London, 2005).