Gender, Culture and Politics in England, 1560-1640: Turning the World Upside Down

by Susan D. Amussen, David E. Underdown, Beat Kümin (Editor), Brian Cowan (Editor)

Overview

Gender, Culture and Politics in England, 1560-1640 integrates social history, politics and literary culture as part of a ground-breaking study that provides revealing insights into early modern English society.

Susan D. Amussen and David E. Underdown examine political scandals and familiar characters-including scolds, cuckolds and witches-to show how their behaviour turned the ordered world around them upside down in very specific, gendered ways. Using case studies from theatre, civic ritual and witchcraft, the book demonstrates how ideas of gendered inversion, failed patriarchs, and disorderly women permeate the mental world of early modern England. Amussen and Underdown show both how these ideas were central to understanding society and politics as well as the ways in which both women and men were disciplined formally and informally for inverting the gender order. In doing so, they give a glimpse of how we can connect different dimensions of early modern society.

This is a vital study for anyone interested in understanding the connections between social practice, culture, and politics in 16th- and 17th-century England.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350020696
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	04/06/2017
Series:	Cultures of Early Modern Europe
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Susan D. Amussen is Professor of History at the University of California, Merced, USA. She is the author of Caribbean Exchanges: Slavery and the Transformation of English Society, 1640-1700 (2007) and An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (1988). She is also the editor of Attending to Early Modern Women (1998; with Adele Seeff) and Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England (1995; with Mark A. Kishlansky).

The late David E. Underdown was George Burton Adams Professor of History at Yale University, USA. He is the author of A Freeborn People: Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-Century England (1996), Fire from Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century (1992), Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603-1660 (1985) and Prides Purge: Politics in the Puritan Revolution (1971).
Susan D. Amussen is Professor of History at the University of California Merced, USA. She is the author of Caribbean Exchanges: Slavery and the Transformation of English Society, 1640-1700 (2007) and An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (1988). She is also the editor of Attending to Early Modern Women (1998; with Adele Seeff) and Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England (1995; with Mark A. Kishlansky).
David E. Underdown was the Late George Burton Adams Professor of History at Yale University, USA. He is the author of Prides Purge: Politics in the Puritan Revolution (1971), Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603-1660 (1985) and Fire From Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century (1992).
Beat Kümin is Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Warwick, UK, where he co-ordinates the Warwick Network for Parish Research&serves as an academic lead of the Global Research Priority on Food. His publications include Drinking Matters: Public Houses and Social Exchange in Early Modern Central Europe (2007) and Imperial Villages: Cultures of Political Freedom in the German Lands (2019). He is also the (co-)editor of A Cultural History of Food in the Early Modern Age (2012), Pfarreien in der Vormoderne (2017) and The European World 1500-1800: An Introduction to Early Modern History (4th edn, 2023).
Brian Cowan is Associate Professor of History at McGill University, Canada. His publications include The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (2005), and The State Trial of Doctor Henry Sacheverell (2012). He contributed to the Multigraph Collective's Interacting with Print: Elements of Reading in the Age of Print Saturation (2018). He is also the (co-)editor of The State Trials and the Politics of Justice in Later Stuart England (2021) and President of the Board of Directors for the international research group 'Sociabilities in the Long Eighteenth Century'.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Unruly Women
2. Failed Patriarchs
3. Performing Inversion: Theatre, Politics, and Society
4. Performing Inversion in Civic Pageantry and Charivari
5. Witches, Magicians, and the Upside-Down World
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

An invaluable synthesis of scholarly material for undergraduates studying early modern gender, literature and social history ... The writing is accessible and elegant ... The authors' conceptual framework of 'inversion' and emphasis on the importance of reciprocity in gender relations are stimulating contributions to the historiography.
The English Historical Review

No-one is better placed to forensically examine the powerful idea of the world turned upside-down, and the unruly women and incompetent men that peopled popular fantasy. In this far-reaching exploration of families, rituals, politics and drama, we begin to understand how fragile order could seem in the early modern world, and why ordinary people as well as monarchs were so preoccupied with testing its limits. An outstanding and necessary piece of social and cultural history.
Laura Gowing, King's College London, UK

Tracing gender's power in domesticity, drama and civic life, Susan Amussen and David Underdown provide an object lesson in the benefits of writing across the artificial separations of political, social and cultural history. A must-read for everyone eager to understand the inner worlds of early modern peoples.
Cynthia B. Herrup, John R. Hubbard Professor of History and Professor of Law, Emerita, University of Southern California, USA

From the Publisher