December 17, 2006
Carnivalesque #22
On the table
Natalie Bennett writes about the Cooke sisters, learned women of the Renaissance, and reviews CJ Samson's Sovereign, the third Master Shardlake detective novel set in the age of Henry VIII.
Alan Baumler presents fascinating material in Keeping Halal in the Ming dynasty.
Confused about tipping? Raminagrobis's Straight Tip to All Cross Coves may not help you work out the correct percentage, but it does offer some interesting etymologies.
Really stretching the limits of the "early modern": Mary Mark Ockerbloom alerts us to Diplomatic Difficulties, a new selection of texts at A Celebration of Women Writers which focuses on "women who were first-hand observers or direct participants in the diplomatic process."
Conrad H. Roth translates and comments on a poem by Ausonius about an adulterous woman who poisons her husband but then worries that the poison was not strong enough.
Mark A. Rayner presents The Lost PowerPoint Slides (Pope Leo X Edition) at the skwib.
Across the table
T. Bridges justifies a madman, specifically, William Dowsing, at The Conventicle.
Gavin Robinson discusses shock tactics during the English Civil War at Investigations of a Dog, and explodes some myths about early-modern cavalry charges.
Abu Sahajj suggests that the work of modern American intellectuals "reflects a greater self-absorption than that of 18th century imperialist scholars" in An Occidental-Muslim's Criticism of Empires and Orthodoxies.
On periodization: Longer Than I Don't Remember: Idiosyncratic Periodization for Fun and Profit by Scott Eric Kaufman (host of the most recent History Carnival).
The Long Eighteenth just finished their second collaborative reading, of The Triumph of Augustan Poetics: English Literary Culture from Butler to Johnson by Blanford Parker (the first was of Michael McKeon's The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge).
At the table
After several weeks of posts on foie gras, Carolyn Smith-Kizer posts a recipe for Goose Pye at 18thC Cuisine.
And, given the season, recipes for Marchpane.
Books, art, and book art
Jem Webster goes museum hopping and offers Bartolomé Esteban Murillo's Four Figures on a Step (ca. 1655-60) for the reader's perusal.
Sharon points toward Joe Miller's Jests: or, The Wits Vade-Mecum (1739) at staggernation (also home of John Ashton's Modern Street Ballads (1888)).
Mister Aitch offers selections from A Catalogue of Engraved and Etched English Title Pages down to the death of William Faithorne, 1691, at Giornale Nuovo. An earlier post offers images from The Naming of Names by Anna Pavord, "an absorbing history of the study, classification and illustration of plants."
More? Visit Heidelberg Schlossgarten at BibliOdyssey. And linger for images from Fasiculus Rariorum, the Comic History of Rome, and, just today, Stilt Walkers.
Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie always has lots to look at. And don't forget to check the item of the day at the 18th-Century Reading Room.
Onstage
Jem Webster posts about how Daniel O'Quinn's Staging Governance: Theatrical Imperialism in London, 1770-1800 has affected his teaching.
Tim Abbott discovers an ancestor in the circus.
And — too good! — Hieronimo imagines — and begins — a Shakespearean history cycle about the Bush family. It's funny because it's true.
My graduate course, Women Onstage in the Long Eighteenth Century, just ended. I blogged; the students blogged; and we made forays into Wikipedia. Speaking of which …
Around the web
The latest in Random Wiki-Testing at Blogging the Renaissance. Hieronimo says this is not a meme, but it looks like fun. Might I add, as a suggestion, that people who do engage in this non-meme might want to consider making some edits if they don't like what they find?
The next Carnivalesque will be an ancient/medieval edition at Memorabilia Antonina on or about 25 January. Want to join the carnival? Submit your blog article to the next edition of Carnivalesque using the quick and painless submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the index page. And please check out the Carnivalesque site.
Thanks to all who submitted links.
November 21, 2006
Carnivalesque
I will be hosting an early modern edition of Carnivalesque on the Dec. 16/17 weekend.
To submit nominations you can either send an email to the carnival email address or to me (jones at unbsj dot ca), or you can use the colourful submission form at Blog Carnival.
My own interests tend towards the latter part of the period and revolve around the literary, women, and the publishing industry, particularly street culture, so anything in that vein would be particularly welcome here. But please, send any and all links to posts you have read, or written yourself. What is a carnival if not abundance in motion?
October 12, 2006
And keep your knees together
Carolyn Smith-Kizer posts an excerpt from some 13th-century advice to bourgeois housewives. My favourite part comes at the end: "She should keep herself from falling asleep at the table; it is really improper, and . . . many who do so end up falling to one side or the other, or backwards, and break their arm or ribs or crack their head."
August 5, 2006
Texts
Domesday Book online (via Cronaca):
As of today, Domesday Book, the oldest public record held at The National Archives, is brought into the 21st century through Domesday Online, the organisation´s latest digitisation project.
The website, provided by The National Archives' DocumentsOnline service, also contains useful information about the history of this 920-year-old document. It was commissioned in 1085 by William I who conquered England after the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Sobering thought for the day: two per cent of those surveyed in a Guardian poll thought that the Domesday Book was Dan Brown's latest novel (via Shopiere).
Classic Illustrated Zoologies and Related Works, 1550-1900 at the NYPL Digital Gallery, and images from Il Bestiario Barocco: The Feather Book by Dionisio Minaggio, digitalised by McGill (via Plep).
Joan of Arc Primary Sources posted online by the Historical Academy for Joan of Arc Studies. But don't visit just yet; this was posted on Metafilter and with all the hits they must be getting, their bandwidth is maxed out.
I WRITE in praise of miscellaneity, and in particular of assortment and variousness in books; of motley volumes; of mixed-up, impure works which nevertheless accord with the mess & disorder of nature, of life.
Unedited version of On the Road to be published (via random Walks). Geez, I thought the one I read was the unedited version.
January 31, 2006
OBSP Symposioum
Jonathan Edelstein is organizing the first online symposium on the Old Bailey Session Paper database, scheduled for February 12. I have said I will post something, though it will not be at all formal. (At all formal.)
September 11, 2005
Forgot to tell you
Was just putzing around in MovableType (my blogging program) and discovered several unfinished posts. Here are two of them combined: some interesting early-modern/19thc resources:
Christopher Hill's The English Revolution, 1640 is available online (link from Plep).
Sharon posted a number of links to electronic journals of early-modern studies. Of particular interest to me is Early Modern Culture, in issue 4 of which can be found "The Case of Moll Frith" by Natasha Korda, and Early Modern Literary Studies, which published a special issue on Margaret Cavendish.
Other excellent resources: Romanticism on the Net
Domestic Goddessess a.k.a. scribbling mobs of women: "A moderated E-journal, devoted to women writers, beginning in the 19th century, who wrote domestic fiction."
Genders: "Presenting Innovative Work in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Theories."
September 6, 2005
Ye Olde Linke Dumpe
First edition of the first Italian writing manual, Sigismondo Fanti's Theorica et practica de modo scribendi fabricandique omnes litterarum species (Venice: Giovanni Rosso, December 1, 1514.) Click for larger image.
Dress an Elizabethan lady with your mouse. Really. Or, at the very least, check out the sorts of things she would have worn. Links via Fascinating History.
Early Modern Carnivalesque is up (Home). Lots of good, good stuff. For instance, info. about 16thc engraving from Giornale Nuovo; see also A Heavenly Craft: The Woodcut in Early Printed Books. Wonderful maps of London at Age of Enlightenment (and why did I not know about this blog? An example of its excellent resources: check out Eat Feed - Georgian England, a podcast with an interview with food historian Gilly Lehmann).
Art of the First Fleet (via Plep):
On 13 May 1787 eleven ships, now commonly referred to as The First Fleet, set sail from Portsmouth to establish a colony in New South Wales, Australia. They reached their destination on 18 January 1788, 18 years after Captain James Cook had first landed on the east coast of Australia at Botany Bay. One of the unplanned but long-lasting outcomes of this event was the large number of outstanding drawings of aboriginal people, the environment and wildlife found on arrival as well as of the early foundation of the colony.
American Notes: Travels in America, 1750-1920: "253 published narratives by Americans and foreign visitors recounting their travels in the colonies and the United States and their observations and opinions about American peoples, places, and society." And Sylvain Marechal (b. 1750), the "Man Without God," at the International Institute of Social History (both via Plep).
Jill Walker writes here (and earlier, here), on plans to digitalize Alexandre Dumas's newspapers. She writes,
Alexandre Dumas directed and/or wrote for eleven newspapers - he was truly into the new technology of the modern press, which was introduced in France in the 1830s. His first newspaper was written solely by Dumas, and was called Le Mois: The tagline must be the tagline of some blog out there: jour par jour, heure par heure (”hour by hour, day by day”). Dumas’ intention was to write a daily chronicle of events. Dumas saw himself as “the universal stenographer” and a “literary worker.”
"Straws in the Wind: Ballads and Broadsides, 1500-1800," a wonderful-sounding conference that I doubt I can attend, on
February 24 and 25, 2006, at the University of California Santa Barbara Early Modern Center (thanks, Sharon. And never forget Sharon's Early Modern Resources, your one stop shop for all things early modern).
Only twelve days left until Sept. 19, which as we all know, is International Talk Like A Pirate Day.
And finally, on this day three hundred and forty-three years ago, Samuel Pepys ate too much.
July 13, 2005
New long 18thc blog
A former student of mine, now finishing her Master's degree at another institution, has begun a new blog in which, among other things, she will catalogue her research towards her planned Ph.D. project on women's coterie writing. Brand new and already some interesting links (and I don't just say that because one is to me), epistolae unde ambitus may be of use to anyone interested in things early modern/18thc.
May 10, 2005
Mothers in history
Missed this for Mothers' Day, but heck, we're mothers 365 days a year, right? Sharon posts her usual trove of links, this time on early modern maternity, including advice books, and two poems by Anne Bradstreet.
Sharon also notes that the Celebration of Women Writers project has its own blog, and I promptly blogrolled it.
April 24, 2005
Ye Olde Linkes
A Variety of Ladies' Head Dresses, The New lady's magazine (1786). Click for larger image.
Ladies' headdresses at the Beinecke (via Jim Chevalier on C18-L).
Sharon posts a multitude of links on crime. She writes, "Has to come around sooner or later in an election campaign." Indeed. She has also scored a copy of Hanging not punishment enough (1701) and plans to make it available. Please do!
The Gutenberg Bible held at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin is available on CD-ROM. G. Zombie has one. Here it is online. There are a number of other copies online: two at the British Library, which one can compare; the Gttingen Gutenberg Bible (ca. 1454); and the Keio Gutenberg Bible. Bible links from the University of Calgary. See also The Oliver Cromwell Website and The Goodspeed New Testament Manuscript Collection (both via Plep).
Libraries as fingerprints at Historiological Notes.
The fantastic architectural drawings of Achilles G. Rizzoli (1896-1981) at Giornale Nuovo.
The Opium Wars (via Plep).
Britain's 18th-c canal system being restored (via Metafilter).
Click for larger image.
March 26, 2005
And I just went on South Beach
Bibi posts to a wonderful site about medieval and Renaissance food. Check out Gode Cookery, a large site with lots of links with intriguing names like A Tale of Two Tarts and Gentyll manly Cokere (from the manly Pepys).
Other tasty links:
Cressee, an Anglo-Norman recipe
Medieval and Anglo Saxon Recipes and Medieval European Recipes
Medieval Italian stew
Medieval and Renaissance Food Homepage
Recipes from Cariadoc's Miscellany
Monumenta Culinaria et Diaetetica Historica: Corpus of culinary & dietetic texts of Europe from the Middle Ages to 1800
The Medieval & Renaissance Cookery Webring Homepage
The Forme of Cury, A Roll Of Ancient English Cookery, Compiled, about A.D. 1390, by the Master-Cooks of King Richard II, Presented afterwards to Queen Elizabeth, by Edward Lord Stafford, and now in the Possession of Gustavus Brander, Esq. Illustrated with Notes, And a copious Index, or Glossary (facsimile)
The Renaissance at the Dinner Table
Sabina Welserin's cookbook (1553)
Food in Tudor England
Two fifteenth-century cookery-books
Jacobean Dinner Recipes
The Accomplisht Cook, or The Art & Mystery of Cookery (1685), and The Compleat Cook (1658): online facsimiles, Biblioteca de la Universitat de Barcelona.
Receipts of Pastry and Cookery For the Use of his Scholars?, by Ed. Kidder, 17-- (facsimile)
Lady Logie's Recipes
18th Century Cooking Equipment
Tallyrand's Culinary Fare: History of Cooking
Seeds for an 18th Century Historically Themed Garden
Jed Wentz's Favorite 18th Century recipes (Quince trifle, anyone?)
"Was death by fire common in Colonial kitchens?" (No.)
Three period restaurants at the fascinating Fortress Louisbourg, N.S. (we visited a few years back)
18thC Cuisine: a blog
Regency Collection: Recipes
Victorian Cake Recipes from Godey's Lady's Book (1860)
Update (12:19pm): Don't know how I could have forgotten to check with the unparallelled linker of things early-modern: Sharon has a great page of foodie links.
February 24, 2005
Things to read
Sharon posts a slew of plaguey links. Of particular note: Natural and Political Observations Mentioned in a following Index, and made upon the Bills of Mortality by John Graunt, Citizen of London; The Dance of Death in Book Illustration by Marcia Collins.
Digital Dante (via Plep).
The Bathroom Diaries: toilets...bathrooms...dignity: "When Nature Calls, even intrepid travelers prefer a comfortable reply" (also via Plep).
January 28, 2005
The performing arts
Garrick as Richard III [inside a gourd??]
Bibi points towards a guided tour of music halls, part of a larger site about performance in the U.K. called PeoplePlay UK: Theatre History Online. Nice pages on Restoration and c18th theatre: lots of graphics and goodies.
Too much of a yawn? Perhaps you'd like to check out buffology: "Every Buffy character, episode, cast member, writer and director and every word of every show, in a searchable database" (via BoingBoing).
WWW Virtual Library: Theatre and Drama.
International Theatre Resources from Artslynx.
Thai Elephant Orchestra (from Mirabilis).
January 12, 2005
Something old
The Scrap Album: Victorian Greeting Cards, Valentines, and Scraps (via Plep).
Check for the History Carnival tomorrow.
There is a thread at C18-L about monstrous births.
Watercolours of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) (featured at Giornale Nuovo).
Misteraitch has started a new weblog at which he is reproducing the essays of Isaac DIsraeli from his Curiosities of Literature, a wide-ranging work full of excellent advice, such as the following:
AMONG the Jesuits it was a standing rule of the order, that after an application to study for two hours, the mind of the student should be unbent by some relaxation, however trifling.
He also warns,
THE literary treasures of antiquity have suffered from the malice of men, as well as that of time. It is remarkable that conquerors, in the moment of victory, or in the unsparing devastation of their rage, have not been satisfied with destroying men, but have even carried their vengeance to books.
Though Misteraitch has rescued him from such a fate.
This is quite an inspiring project. I wonder if I have anything that is otherwise unavailable; one or two things, I think. Think how much we could add to the common pool if we all followed Misteraitch's lead.
January 11, 2005
Unwanted children
Most are probably aware of the ill-considered bill which, had it become law, would have required women to report stillbirths and presumably miscarriages to local authorities within twelve hours. Most are probably also aware that "after a firestorm of controversy spread across the World Wide Web over the weekend," John Cosgrove, the proposer of the bill, has withdrawn it.
Posting has been fast and furious: Democracy for Virginia has a series of comprehensive posts. See also
Pharyngula: "Virginia is for hateful loons"
iBeth: "Safe Havens": Terrible Idea
The Well-Timed Period: "Del. Cosgrove: Don't Relax Just Yet"
Bitch Ph.D (and here)
apostropher: "All your baby are belong to us."
Rosemary Hurford is spitting mad.
getupgrrl's vagina is angry. And how.
Dr. B: Pardon My French.... and The Power of the Blogosphere.
A rant from Echidne.
(Not) Mousewords: "First these women blog, and next thing you know, they'll be letting them vote."
Our sisters to the South just dodged a bullet. But while they are jubilant, I don't suppose anyone is forgetting that that particular gun is still cocked and loaded.
Oops, a double entendre. But I don't feel in the least amused, writing this.
Sharon has an excellent post, outlining the history of legislation against infanticide in England (she also links to two excellent bibliographies, btw).
This whole story apart from the apparent power of blogging is disheartening. My dissertation was about infanticide in Britain in the 18th- and 19th centuries, so I am familiar with the history Sharon outlines. And with the hysteria over the visions of "dead babies on rubbish heaps" that gripped England in the Victorian era. And the ludicrous, punitive, and ignorant responses of the authorities.
Plus a change, plus c'est la mme chose.
January 2, 2005
Places to go
For you, not me:
The latest Early Modern Carnival is up at Claire's: Part I and Part II.
Beautiful works by Max Ernst at Giornale Nuovo.
Rich and wonderful antique tiles and exhibition: John DePol: Artist and Engraver (links from Life In The Present).
4,000 years of women in science (via Plep).
And oh my god, except for the goatee, this is me (via Boing Boing).
December 15, 2004
Sharon, don't ever take your site down!
Or I would lose gazillion wonderful links. Today, there is a whole pile on Aphra Behn.
November 30, 2004
Early-modern links
Several links from Sharon: recent early-modern reviews online; The Dictionary of the History of Ideas online edition (and links to entries of potential interest); and a draft of a very useful glossary of terms for students of early modern crime and law and order.
Exhibition at the Folger of Letterwriting in Renaissance England (Thanks, George). Alas, not much online other than the following, but it is evocative enough to reproduce:
Letters as Ligaments the World do tie,
Else all commerce and love 'twixt men would die. . . .
James Howell, Epistolae Ho-Elianae (London, 1650)
It could be argued that the letter was the single most important genre of the Renaissance: not merely one literary form among many (though it was that too), but the very glue that held society together. As the opening epigram suggests, letters were essential "Ligaments," serving as the primary form of non-verbal communication for hundreds of years, with the power to inform and influence people over long distances, for better and for worse.
This exhibition devotes itself to the myriad processes of letterwriting: the penning, sending, receiving, reading, circulating, copying, and saving of letters. The text of a letter provides one part of the story, while its very tangibility --the ancient folds, the grime and fingerprints deposited by the writer, deliverer, and readers, the broken seals, the ink blots, the idiosyncratic spelling, the location of a signature--tells another. An understanding of a letter's written and unwritten social signals brings into focus a fuller, grittier, and ultimately more convincing picture of everyday life in early modern England.
George also links to a Washington Post article about the exhibit.
Misteraitch takes us to Schlaraffenland:
a utopian country, a Land of Cockaigne, originally described in a satire by one Johann Andreas Schnebelin (d. 1706). It is a place where "chickens, geese, and pigeons fly around already cooked and waiting to be eaten, and every house is surrounded by a hedge of sausage." A number of maps of this country were apparently produced between 1700 and 1750. The one pictured [at Giornale Nuovo] was published by Johann Baptist Homann in Nuremburg in 1716.
Misteraitch also displays some lovely c16th engravings by Jacob Hoefnagel.
Experts wary of software designed to hunt down faked masterpieces (at Renaissance Weblog).
A whole slew of posts on St. Catherine at Siris. Scroll down; I can't link to them all.
September 24, 2004
When girls were girls
Natalie has two posts on early-modern gender: "Stays are quite low, with the bosom much exposed," about costume, and "The plasticity of gender," about an all-woman production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe. A nice companion piece to the production of Romeo and Juliet I read about last year, performed by four boys.
September 20, 2004
Don Juan
Bookninja points towards a beautiful site called Don Juan that moves outward from the focus of its title to cover a wealth of material about the 17th century in Europe.
(Cross-posted to Conversations).
September 3, 2004
Carnivalesque #1, July/August 2004
Inaugural post of the new early modern Carnivalesque is at Early Modern Notes.
August 29, 2004
Houyhnhnm Land
Brandon Watson's teaching blog "devoted to helping make sense of the flood of resources in early modern philosophy." Why am I telling you this, you may ask? Because of the extremely useful, link-rich posts on Margaret Cavendish, Catherine Trotter, Mary Astell, and Damaris Cudworth, Lady Masham, that's why.
Thanks to Sharon for the link.
August 27, 2004
Who, me morbid?
My Blair Witch photo of the cemetary at Bury St. Edmunds (July 2004). Click image for larger view.
Afterlife: the four seasons in Streatham Cemetery: lovely in a the opening of Six Feet Under sort of way (from web zen).
Thanatos.net: death mask gallery (from web zen).
The Body Revealed: Renaissance and Baroque Anatomical Illustration (from Plep).
Obituary Central (from Plep).
Cemetery art and photography (from Plep).
Death and Dying, part of the Victorian Dictionary (from Plep).
William Corder's death mask, the Moyses Hall Museum, Bury St. Edmunds
Illustrations
Seeing Is Believing: 700 years of scientific and medical illustration: an exhibition from the New York Public Library (2000). Nice site which allows you to look at some of the illustrations in detail (from Mirabilis).
Drolleries and two posts about Andrea Mantegnaat Giornale Nuovo.
June 22, 2004
Caxon, Shakespeare, and Children's lit.
Priceless Caxton book goes on show for first time. Book written by Benedictine monk in 1360 and printed by William Caxton in 1482 (via Mirabilis).
William Caxton stamps commemorating the 500th anniversary of printing in 1976.
Printing in England from William Caxton to Christopher Barker An Exhibition: University of Glasgow, November 1976 April 1977.
Caxton's Chaucer: compare the 1476 and 1483 editions held in the British Library.
18th and 19th Century Shakespearean Illustrations (via Plep).
Shakespeare Illustrated "explores nineteenth-century paintings, criticism and productions of Shakespeare's plays and their influences on one another."
How Shakespeare Prepared Manuscripts.
Intermingling illustration and text: hyper-illuminated criticism of Shakespeare's Works.
Alice and Beyond: English Children's Books (via Plep).
The Children's Literature Web Guide.
Authors & Illustrators on the Web.
Fairrosa Cyber Library of Children's Literature.
June 19, 2004
Things Early Modern
Instead of just silently bookmarking them, I would like to draw attention to two new weblogs: 17th century, an exciting group blog which seems to be written by mainly youngish scholars in the UK, and Early Modern Resources, Sharon Howard's blog which grows from her site. She also has a page focused on British and Welsh history, the history of crime, and women's history. And, Claire from 17th century has set up an early modern topic exchange.
May 22, 2004
Gender resources
Mary Robinson's "A Letter to the Women of England, on the Injustice of Mental Subordination": A Hypertext Edition (via wood s lot).
African American Women Writers of the 19th-Century.
The History of Rape: A Bibliography compiled by Stefan Blaschke (via wood s lot).
E-books by Women Writers, from Louisa May Alcott to Zitkala-S.
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility: Women and Computing.
The Center for Women and Change: Women's Resources.
"Trashing the Hallmark card mom" by Katy Read at Salon, with links to various mothers' organizations (via feministing.com).