Bücher der Reihe Routledge Research in Early Modern History

What does obscene mean? What does it have to say about the means through which meaning is produced and received in literary, artistic and, more broadly, social acts of representation and interaction? Early modern France and Europe faced these questions not only in regard to the political, religious and artistic reformations for which the Renaissance stands, but also in light of the reconfiguration of its mediasphere in the wake of the invention of the printing press. The Politics of Obscenity brings together researchers from Europe and the United States in offering scholars of early modern Europe a detailed understanding of the implications and the impact of obscene representations in their relationship to the Gutenberg Revolution which came to define Western modernity.

The Enlightenment brought forth the idea that the future was uncertain and could be shaped by human beings. Those who sought support for their plans needed to reflect, develop new arguments, and offer new reasons to address an anonymous public. This book explores these "languages of reform."

Authorities ranging from philosophers to politicians nowadays question the existence of concepts of society, whether in the present or the past. This book argues that social concepts most definitely existed in late medieval and early modern England, laying the foundations for modern models of society. The book analyzes social paradigms and how they changed in the period. A pervasive medieval model was the "body social," which imagined a society of three estates ΓÇô the clergy, the nobility, and the commonalty ΓÇô conjoined by interdependent functions, arranged in static hierarchies based upon birth, and rejecting wealth and championing poverty. Another model the book describes as "social humanist," that fundamentally questioned the body social, advancing merit over birth, mobility over stasis, and wealth over poverty. The theory of the body social was vigorously articulated between the 1480s and the 1550s. Parts of the old metaphor actually survived beyond 1550, but alternative models of social humanist thought challenged the body concept in the period, advancing a novel paradigm of merit, mobility, and wealth. The bookΓÇÖs methodology focuses on the intellectual context of a variety of contemporary texts.

William the Silent and the Dutch Revolt examines the first stages of the Dutch struggle against Spanish rule during late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is a key resource for scholars and students of early modern European history, as well as those interested in the history of revolts.

This book analyzes homicide prosecution in the 18th century. Using case studies, it explores the ways law intersected with concerns about the relationships between government and the governed, and argues that previous studies have underplayed the importance of context in determining who hanged.

This volume explores the complex and fascinating social, cultural and confessional relations in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1795) through close readings of newly discovered or long neglected sources, emphasizing urban and rural spaces, families, communities, networks and travels.

"Originally published in Italian as Il governo della lettura: chiesa e libri nell'Italia del Settecento; Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007"--Title page verso.

Written in honour of the leading historian of war and state formation in the early modern Low Countries Marjolein 't Hart, the chapters gathered in this volume examine the main drivers, beneficiaries and discontents of state formation across and beyond Europe in the early modern period.

This book analyzes conversion as the acquisition of a set of historically contingent social practices, which facilitated the process of social, political or religious acculturation. Exploring the role conversion played in the fabrication of cosmopolitan Mediterranean identities, the book examines the idea of the convert as a mediator and translator between cultures.

This volume offers scholars of early modern Europe a detailed understanding of the implications and the impact of obscene representations in their relationship to the Gutenberg Revolution which came to define Western modernity.

This volume offers the first comprehensive survey of regime change in Italy in the period c.1494-c.1559.Far from being a purely modern phenomenon, regime change was a common feature of life in Renaissance Italy - no more so than during the Italian Wars (1494-1559). During those turbulent years, governments rose and fell with dizzying regularity. Some changes of regime were peaceful; others were more violent. But whenever a new reggimento took power, old social tensions were laid bare and new challenges emerged - any of which could easily threaten its survival. This provoked a variety of responses, both from newly established regimes and from their opponents. Constitutional reforms were proposed and enacted; civic rituals were developed; works of art were commissioned; literary works were penned; and occasionally, aspects of material culture were pressed into service, as well. Comparative in approach and broad in scope, it offers a provocative new view of the diverse political, culture, and economic factors, which ensured the survival (or demise) of regimes - not only in "major" polities like Florence, Rome, and Venice, but also in less-well-studied regions like Savoy.This book will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in cultural, political, and military history.

Piracy and Captivity in the Mediterranean exlores the early modern genre of Barbary Coast captivity narratives. This collection is divided into three parts, in the first two the chapters use specifically selected narratives as case studies to explore the genres of narrating captivity in Part One and authenticity and fiction in c

This volume explores the complex and fascinating social, cultural and confessional relations in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1795) through close readings of newly discovered or long neglected sources, emphasizing urban and rural spaces, families, communities, networks and travels.

This volume provides a fresh perspective of the history and legacy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as the often-disputed memory of it in contemporary Europe.The unions between the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania have fascinated many readers particularly because many solutions that have been implemented in the European Union have been adopted from its Central and Eastern European predecessor. The collection of essays presented in this volume are divided into three parts - the Beginnings of Poland-Lithuania, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Legacy and Memory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - and represent a selection of the papers delivered at the Third Congress of International Researchers of Polish History which was held in Cracow on 11-14 October 2017. Through their application of different historiographical perspectives and schools of history they offer the reader a fresh take on the Commonwealth's history and legacy, as well as the memory of it in the countries that are its inheritors, namely Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine.An exploration of one of the biggest countries in Early Modern Europe, this will be of interest to historians, political scientists, cultural anthropologists and other scholars of the history of Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Modern period.

Voices in the Legal Archives in the French Colonial World: "The King is Listening" offers, through the contribution of thirteen original chapters, a sustained analysis of judicial practices and litigation during the first era of French overseas expansion.The overall goal of this volume is to elaborate a more sophisticated "social history of colonialism" by focusing largely on the eighteenth century, extending roughly from 1700 until the conclusion of the Age of Revolutions in the 1830s. By critically examining legal practices and litigation in the French colonial world, in both its Atlantic and Oceanic extensions, this volume of essays has sought to interrogate the naturalized equation between law and empire, an idea premised on the idea of law as a set of doctrines and codified procedures originating in the metropolis and then transmitted to the colonies. This book advances new approaches and methods in writing a history of the French empire, one which views state authority as more unstable and contested. Voices in the Legal Archives proposes to remedy the under-theorized state of France's first colonial empire, as opposed to its post-1830 imperial expressions empire, which have garnered far more scholarly attention.This book will appeal to scholars of French history and the comparative history of European empires and colonialism.

This book draws essential comparisons in terms of remarriage patterns and stepfamily life with Northwestern Europe.