The Senses in Religious Communities, 1600-1800: Early Modern 'Convents of Pleasure'

by Nicky Hallett, Allyson M Poska, Abby Zanger

Overview

Offering a comprehensive analysis of newly-uncovered manuscripts from two English convents near Antwerp, this study gives unprecedented insight into the role of the senses in enclosed religious communities during the period 1600–1800. It draws on a range of previously unpublished writings-chronicles, confessions, letters, poetry, personal testimony of various kinds-to explore and challenge assumptions about sensory origins.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472401373
Publisher:	Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Publication date:	05/28/2013
Series:	Women and Gender in the Early Modern World
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	17 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Nicky Hallett is a Senior Lecturer in the School of English at the University of Sheffield, UK.

Table of Contents

Contents: Introduction: touching nuns; In which Mrs Eyre protects the impressionable souls of her tender daughters; Becoming behaviour: two cases of sensational reading; Titillation and texture: the sixth sense of ’handsome handid nuns’; Of taste and tongue: ’a very slippery member’; Still small voices: sounds, sibilance and silences in early modern convents; Of smell and space: ’evaporating subjects’; Eagle-eyed nuns: envisioning vision in contemplative communities; Sensate certainty: a conclusion of sorts; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

’... a fascinating study of an unusual, interesting, and hitherto unstudied archive that provides useful and new insights into how the fields of early modern gender studies and sensory history intersect... This book will undoubtedly have a huge impact in shaping the contours of the fast-evolving field of sensory history, particularly in its analysis of gender and religion.’ Holly Dugan, The George Washington University, USA 'Hallett has made a stunningly original contribution to the critical conversation on early modern female monasticism, and, furthermore, this book will no doubt prompt others' contributions to the conversation as well.' Historians of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland '... Hallett’s book is provocative throughout, evoking localized atmospheres that extend current understandings of the senses in the early modern period. ...one key thread throughout is conduct literature, allowing Hallett to offer a rich investigation of the nature of cloistered being. This lively and engaging study will be of great interest to scholars working on the senses, religion, gender, and women writers.' Renaissance Quarterly '... the strength of the book comes from [Hallett's] own intense engagement with the archives, the texts, and the writing, reading, and praying women themselves. ... this book will be of interest to a wide range of early modern scholars, whether interested in the history of reading, English Catholicism(s), or women's embodied experiences.' Seventeenth-Century News ’[This book] is a precious, well-informed, beautifully researched addition to the existing canonical historiography, yet it quite deliberately remains at the margins, both through its subject and its form. It is audacious, scholarly and lyrical at once, it defies the rigid pigeon-holes of genres, and engages readers fully by not always giving them what they expected when and where they would have expected it. It is also a landmark in the developing scholarship on early moder

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