Karen Newman

City Talk: Women and Commodification in Jonson's Epicoene

In the liveliest London streets, the shops press one against the other, shops which flaunt behind their hollow eyes of glass all the riches of the world, Indian cashmeres, American revolvers, Chinese porcelains, French corsets, Russian furs and tropical spices; but all these things promising the pleasures of the world bear those deadly white labels on their fronts on which are engraved arabic numerals with laconic characters-?, s, d (pound sterling, shilling, pence). This is the image of commodities as they appear in circulation.

Renaissance Family Politics and Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew

dronken dogg, pisspott and other unseemly names.” When Rosyer tried to come to bed to her, she “still raged against him and badd h m out dronken dogg dronken pisspott. ” She struck him several times, clawed his face and arms, spit at him and beat him out of bed. Rosyer retreated, returned to the alehouse, and drank until he could hardly stand up. Shortly thereafter, Thomas Quarry and others met and “agreed amongest themselfs that the said Thomas Quarry who dwelt at the next howse . . . should. . , ryde abowt the towne upon a cowlestaff whereby not onley the woman which had offended might be shunned for her misdemeanors towards her husband but other women also by her shame might be admonished to offence in like sort.”’ Domestic violence, far from being contained in the family, spills out into the neighborhood, and the response of the community is an “old country ceremony used in merriment upon such accidents. Quarry, wearing a kirtle or gown and apron, was carryed to diverse places and as he rode did admonishe all wiefs to take heede how they did beate their husbands.” The Rosyers’ neighbors reenacted their troubled gender relations: the beating was repeated with Quarry in woman’s clothes playing Rosyer’s wife, the neighbors standing in for the “abused” husband, and a rough music procession to the house of the transgressors. The result of this “merriment” suggests its darker purpose and the anxiety about gender relations it displays: the offending couple left the village in shame. The skimmington, as it was sometimes called, served its w On arriving at his door, he is greeted by his wife with

Corneille's City Comedy: Courtship and Consumption in Early Modern Paris

The long renewed since dubbed interest the in historical new historicism scholarship has prompted within literary work studies on the city comedies of Heywood, Jonson, Middleton, and others.1 Recent commentators have addressed issues connected with urbanization, including consumerism and new markets, information and communications, credit, capital accumulation, and political economy Though lip service is occasionally given to the European context of these historical formations, with few exceptions (Cohen; Greene; Vickers) they have been considered primarily in the context of early modern England and English drama. In what follows, I want to look at how such changes were manifested across the Channel, not in early modern London, but in early modern Paris. In his study of European urbanization, Jan de Vries demonstrates a marked acceleration in the rate of urban growth between 1550 and 1650 in northwestern Europe. London more than quadrupled its population, from some 40,000 to over 400,000; the population of Paris doubled from roughly 250,000 in the 1 560s to some 5 10,000 by 1645, its growth inhibited no doubt by the wars of religion and later the Fronde.2 Demographic growth represents, however, only a statistical definition of cities: recently urban historians have also been concerned with what they term structural urbanization, that is, with large-scale, coordinated activities such as the operation of a centralized state, the production of and exchange of goods via large-scale markets, and urban relationships that cross social, kinship

Putti Galore: ‘Eventails de Bosse’ and the Judgment of Paris

Abstract The availability of luxury goods is often thought to be a twentieth-century phenomenon, but the ‘consumer revolution’ taking place in Europe in the seventeenth century accelerated the pace of production, availability and consumption of goods of all kinds, particularly luxury goods. Paintings, printed books and engravings, silk, gloves and lace, watches, porcelain and fans all became coveted objects available to a widening demographic. By considering the process of engraving and an engraved fan leaf by the renowned early modern engraver Abraham Bosse that represents the Judgment of Paris, this paper considers questions of gender, aesthetic judgment, engraving and the copy.

Wik-Crit: Gender, Comparative Literature and Early Modern Studies

Gender studies is a field of interdisciplinary study which analyzes the phenomenon of gender. It examines both cultural representations of gender and people’s lived experience. Gender Studies is sometimes related to studies of class, race, ethnicity and location. The philosopher Simone de Beauvoir said: ‘One is not born a woman, one becomes one’. In Gender Studies the term ‘gender’ is used to refer to the social and cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities. It does not refer to biological difference, but rather cultural difference. Thefield emerged from a number of different areas: the sociology of the 1950s and later (see Sociology of gender); the theories of the psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan; and the work of feminists such as Judith Butler. Each field came to regard ‘gender’ as a practice, sometimes referred to as something that is performative.