Welcome To The Otherness Project!
This website is part of a project funded by the Polish National Science Centre, NCN grant 2013/09/N/HS2/02213, entitled “Aspects of Otherness and traces of late medieval religiosity in the literature of seventeenth century puritan communities in England and America”. Please contact the principal investigator, Joanna Ludwikowska, if you'd like to view more of the research sample or have any questions or comments about the project.
This website is part of a project funded by the Polish National Science Centre, NCN grant no. 2013/09/N/HS2/02213 (DEC-2013/09/N/HS2/02213), entitled “Aspects of Otherness and traces of late medieval religiosity in the literature of seventeenth century puritan communities in England and America”. The completion of this project was made possible by the generous funding of that institution. The project is hosted by the Faculty of English at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, and its head researcher is Dr. Joanna Ludwikowska
I would like to thank the National Science Centre in Poland for its generous funding that made research in this project possible. Expressions of gratitude are also due to the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań for hosting the project, and to the Faculty of English and its Dean, prof. Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, for allowing me to work on the project as an affiliate and research associate of the Faculty. Finally, I would like to thank the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies Library at the University of Toronto for granting me access to the bulk of the research sample in the CRRS Rare Book Library, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and other University of Toronto libraries. All libraries contacted in the course of this project, including Houghton Library, the Library of Congress, and the rich contents of Early English Books Online likewise deserve to be singled out, and I am grateful for the aid their resources provided.
Useful links:
The National Science Centre
The Faculty of English (AMU)
Adam Mickiewicz University
The Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies Library
Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library
Houghton Library
British Library
About My Project
The aim of the project is to analyze the mechanisms of conceptualizing the Other in puritan English and Anglo-American communities as a continuation of medieval traditions. The main hypothesis is that the dynamics of classifying evil deeds as sins or crimes along with the assignation of punishments in both periods bears many similarities. The research sample comprises of primary sources of both periods. Otherness is defined as a behavioural and ethical alteration from a standard, subjectively perceived as such by a community and its individual members.
The analysis and description of the processes behind defining Otherness is the main aim of the project, accompanied by two detailed aims:
1. To establish similarities and differences in the influence the perception of Otherness had on the formation and structures of a given community:
a. By establishing similarities and differences in definitions of the Other in medieval and puritan English literature;
b. By identifying similarities in strategies of dealing with the Other;
c. By determining the influence the sense of identity and tradition had on the perception of Otherness.
2. To create and popularize a new model of research on Otherness.
Apart from the present website, the results of the project are disseminated by means of conference presentations, publications in journals and book chapters, an internet database (corpus, under this link: http://otherness.netux.ayz.pl/titles.html#about ), and an anthology of texts on the subject. Please feel free to explore this website, and to contact the project leader should you have any questions.
This website contains, apart from information about the project and publications that arose from it, also, among other things, transcriptions of texts that are part of the project's research sample. You can find some of the texts here, and you can contact the project's leader if you want to see more transcriptions (joanna.ludwikowska.leniec@gmail.com)
Intro
The concept of Otherness, often defined as an effect of the process of group identity construction, seems to be vital not only as a characteristic feature of a given period and community, but also as a carrier of tradition, comprising the essence of the sense of belonging to a culture. Determining identity by means of establishing behaviours, people or ideologies which are unacceptable in ways deriving from the English tradition is often ommitted in studies conducted on the construction and dynamics of puritan communities, especially in America, where most sources focus on puritans as the fathers of the American nation (e.g. Delbanco 1985, Miller 1953), ignoring their close relations with England and the English tradition (which are sometimes treated as obvious, but their scope and details remain unexamined).
There is need for research on the degree of the transplantation of various mechanisms of constructing Otherness from the English medieval tradition, onto communities founded on these traditons in England and America in the seventeenth century in order to fill in a gap in the study of English cultural and literary history by investigating the actual state and details of the puritan relation to the English culture, and its origin in the earlier periods. The study of English culture, as one of the most influential in the world both historically and contemporarily, will give grounds to draw also more general (anthropological, sociological, cultural) conclusions about the tradition of concepts of the Other in Western Civilization.
The scientific problem which the project aims at solving, is the question of the degree to which puritan communities in seventeenth century England and America continued late medieval ideologies on Otherness, understood as the subjective perception of difference in behaviours or ethics, by a community and its individual members.
The research objetive is to extract, analyze and describe the reasons and mechanisms behind the creation of concepts of the Other in puritan communities as set in a medieval tradition.
The main hypothesis of the project is that the dynamics of the assignation of the category of Otherness in percieving people, groups or bad deeds (either as sins, crimes, or both), along with defence mechanisms and the assignation of punishments in both periods has many common points, illustrating the construction of Otherness as a dynamic process which derives from, and continues, a certain tradition. For instance, the project assumes there are similarities between literary representations of:
1. medieval views on sin (sins as a crime against God), and puritan spiritual texts concerned with sin
2. medieval outlaw and ghost stories, and seventeenth century broadside ballads
3. medieval and puritan views on the Devil, protection from temptation, spiritual self-improvement
4. the discourse on women in both periods
5. the treatment of heresy (e.g. Lollards and Antinomians) and other religions in both periods
6. the act of penance (the importance of contrition), ideas on retribution and punishment in both periods.
The points which the project wishes to investigate are:
a) whether literary and cultural texts of both periods illustrate the existance of mechanisms of constructing Otherness, and to what extent the puritan seventeenth century texts reflect their belonging to a medieval tradition,
b) how much the existance of such a continuation is influenced by the fact that communities in both periods were founded on religious premises, and what areas of life are pervaded by this continuation
c) what is the process of creating and modifying normative measures in such communities and how does it depend on traditions they derive from
d) to what degree have religious ideologies pervaded social life, especially in the area of normative and identity-developing processes.
The main research objective has two detailed aims:
1.To establish the similarities and differences in the influence the perception of Otherness has on the formation and structures of a given community by:
a).Establishing the similarities and differences in the definitions of Otherness in English medieval and puritan literature
The aim is to determine what was percieved as Other in medieval England and puritan England and America. The hypothesis is that there are many similarities between the literary definitions of Otherness in both literatures.
b).Determining common points in ways of dealing with the Other
The aim is to extract social, legal and religious mechanisms of dealing with the Other in both periods, as well as the dynamics of constructing the concept of justice, purity, good and evil. The hypothesis is that there are common points in the choices of normative measures in both periods.
c). Determining the influence the sense of identity and tradition has on the perception of Otherness.
The aim is to establish the influence of the sense of belonging to the English tradition and culture on particular strategies of constructing and dealing with the Other inside and outside a puritan community, and its individual members. The hypothesis is that there is a dependance between the sense of identity and belonging to a given tradition, and the perception of Otherness.
2.To create and popularize a new model for reasearch on Otherness, and the research outcomes by:
a). Developing innovative methodology as a research tool for the investigation of Otherness in literatures across ages, filling in a methodological gap in research on the topic in the context of both periods, offering also an opportunity for using this model in research on Otherness in other fields in the humanities.
b). Popularizing research outcomes by means of papers read at international conferences and congresses (e.g. International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds; International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo; The Society of Early Americanists Biennial Conference; Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Law and Literature Conference, Saint Andrews; as well as other thematic conferences held in 2014-2016), journal publications (e.g. Medieval Studies journals (Speculum,Marginalia), American Studies journals (The Early America Review), post-medieval literature studies (Early Modern Literary Studies), and medieval and early modern England studies (Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval Studies), as well as a variety of presentations for non-academic audiences (e.g. Festiwal Nauki i Sztuki), describing both the outcomes, and the methodology of the project.
My project step by step
Initial research indicates the existance of similarities between literary representations of:
a. medieval views on sin (sins as a crime against God), and puritan spiritual texts concerned with sin (e.g. medieval Walter Hilton's 'Scale of Perfection' (14th century), The Penitential of Bartholomew Iscanus (13th century), Robert Mannyg's 'Handlyng Synne' , and puritan ‘The arraignment of superstition’ (1641), Richard Baxter's ‘The right method for a settled peace of conscience’ (1653), Thomas Beard's 'The Theatre of God's Judgments (1597))
b. medieval outlaw and ghost stories, and seventeenth century broadside ballads (read by many audiences, including the Puritans, e.g. medieval William of Newburgh (1190) chronicle, 'Tale of Gamelyn' (14th century), 'Awntyrs of Arthur' (early fifteenth century), puritan ‘The Disturbed Ghost, or The Wonderful Appearance of the Ghost or Spirit of Edward Avon (1674)’, ‘Here Is a True and Perfect Relation from the Falcon of the Strange and Wonderful Apparition of Mr. Powel' (1661), ‘A true and perfect relation from the Falcon’, Increase Mather’s 'Remarkable Providences, an essay for the recording of illustrious providences' (1684),)
c. medieval and puritan views on the Devil, protection from temptation, spiritual self-improvement (e.g. William Flete's 'Remedies against Temptations' (15th cent), Everyman (14th cent), puritan Thomas Brooks' ‘Precious remedies against Satan’s devices’ (ca. 1650?), Mary Rowlandson's, ‘Narrative of the captivity and restoration of Mrs Rowlandson’ (1682))
d. the discourse on women in both periods (e.g. medieval female saint lives in the South English Legendary, William Caxton's 'Gilte Legende' and his translation of Vitas Patrum (15th cent), and Osberne Bockenham's 'Legendys of Hooly Wummen' (1447), and the puritan Joseph Glanville's 'Sadducimus Triumphatus' (1681), the anonymous 'A true and just Recorde’ (1582), George Giffard's 'A Dialogue concerning witches and witchcrafts' (1603), the anonymous Witchfinder General trials ‘A tryal of witches at the Assizes’ (1664), Cotton Mather's ‘Ornaments for the daughters of Zion’ (1692), The Wonders of the Invisible World’(1693). Thomas Shepard's The Parable of the Ten Virgins’ (1636-1640))
e. the treatment of heresy (e.g. Lollards and Antinomians) and other religions in both periods (e.g. medieval John Mirk's Festial (ca.1415) 'The trials of William Thorpe and Lord Cobham' , and the puritan Thomas Edwards' 'Gangraena Or A Catalogue and Discovery of many of the Errours, Herefies, Blasphemies and pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of this time, vented and acted in England in these four laft years (1646)' and John Winthrop's 'A Short Story of the Rise, Reign and Ruine of the Antinomians' (1644))
f. the act of penance (the importance of contrition), ideas on retribution and punishment in both periods. (e.g. 'Sir Gowther' (14th cent) and other penitential romances, 'Pety Job', 'The Gast of Gy', and the puritan Arhur Dent's ‘The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven’ (1610), John Reynolds' ‘The triumph of God’s revenge against the crying and execrable Sinne of Murther’ (1621), Thomas Hooker's ‘The Soul’s Preparation for Christ’ (c.1626), the anonymous ‘The danger of desertion’ (1631), Solomon Stoddard's ‘The Safety of Appearing at the Day of Judgment’ (1685))
g. morality, crime, and punishment in both periods, (e.g. anon. 'Weye of Paradys' (late 14th/early 15th cent), anon. 'The penitent prisoner: his character, carriage upon his commitment, letany, proper prayers, serious meditations, sighs, occasional ejaculations, devotion going to execution, and at the place of execution' (1675), Samuel Danforth's 'The cry of Sodom enquired into’(1674)).
2. Critical paths and outline of the work plan:
The work plan includes a complex comparative analysis of medieval and puritan source texts (including yet unpublished), acquired in the course of a substantive library and archives query in university libraries (and within the libraries of selected departments) in Great Britain (mainly in Oxford: Bodleian Library and selected college libraries, e.g. Brasenose, Campion Hall, Christ Church Library, Greyfriars Oxford Centre for Franciscan Studies, Harris Manchester College Library, Keble College Library, Magdalen College Library, Merton, Regent's Park College Library, Trinity College; Leeds (Special Collections Library); London: British Library, National Archives; St Andrews: Reformation Studies Institute; Aberdeen: Centre for Early Modern Studies), the United States of America (mainly in Harvard, Boston, Chicago, Cornell: Kroch Library, Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections (Carl A. Kroch Library), Washington: the Library of Congress, University of Arizona: Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies, Virginia, Nebraska) and Canada (Toronto: Center for Renaissance and Reformation Studies). The analysis will be conducted with the use of theories and approaches from the field of literary studies (cultural studies; New Historicism, Post-structuralism), culture studies (theory of hegemony, agency theory, resistance theory), anthropology (projection idea, relations of religion to power and inequality), sociology (labelling theiry, control theory, retributivism, concept of legal culture, sociology of deviance etc), psychology (cultural psychology evolutionary psychology of religion) and philosophy (phnomenology). They will be used together in order to create new research tools for the investigation of the concept of Otherness.
The project will start with a 3-4 month query trip, first to Great Britain, and then to the USA and Canada, combined with completing secondary sources bibliography (the purchase of books). Letters, diaries, notes, registers, observations, sermons and speeches as well as poems, prose, religious and literary works from the fourteenth, fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, which will contain manifestations of existing or nascent definitions of Otherness concerning people or events, as well as the author's self-defined identity will be of interest. Having gathered a sufficient research sample, the researcher will commence an analysis in line with the detailed objectives of the project:
Objective no.1(abc) and objective no.2 (ab), tasks 3-5 in the work plan chart, divided into three phases:
The first one aims at a revision of the definition of Otherness in late medieval England, in order to establish the relation between particular aspects of the concept, and their religious and social siginificance. Thanks to the investigation of the development of the concept of the Other in England in the XIVth and XVth century, the phases and effects of the dynamic construction of Otherness before the renaissance will be outlined in such aspects as crime and punishment, sin and penance, society and the individual (women, other religions). As an effect, a model for the investigation of Otherness in puritan England is to be established, enabling an analysis of definitons of Otherness as a continuity of the medieval model in the same aspects, while taking into account all the variables caused by socio-cultural changes between the two periods. Such an analysis will extract the mechanisms of constructing Otherness in English puritan communities which likewise as the late medieval period, is characterized, among others, by the siginificance of religion to society both in existing and newly settled communities and groups. This objective will be completed in the first year of the duration of the project, and the outcomes will be presented on two international conferences, a few presentations and at least one publication (accepted for print in the first year of the project).
The second phase focuses on how the construction of Otherness via texts (including speeches and sermons) influenced the forms of dealing with various percieved manifestations of the Other in specific communities and their subgroups ( i.e. by the medieval gentry, merchants, clergy and putirans of the middle and upper-classes). The analysis will include the similarities between confession and penance in both periods, dependent on the social class and profession of the sinner (including the socio-political and cultural changes between the periods), by comparing medieval sin manuals with records of public penance in the puritan period,investigating the relations between the private and public spheres: the similarities and differences in the peception of penance not just as a personal, but also communal act. Of equal importance will be texts describing the administration of justice (executions, trials) as normative measures aimed at the eradication, or at least protection against Otherness (understood according to research outcomes of phase 1). The didactic spectacle of medieval theatre and sermons will be compared to the puritan justice system, where the administation of punishment was to be both entertaining, and didactic. The degree to which the foundations (and forms) of medieval normative processes have been retained in the seventeenth century will be investigated along with an examination of those which have been transplanted from the private, to the public sphere of the whole community (such as rape trials). Furthermore, an analysis of the degree and pace of the integration of two initially different normative systems (religion and law) will be conducted, examining also the dynamics of the development of the concept of ethics. This objective will be completed in the second year of the project, and the outcomes will be presented on 2 international conferences, a few presentations and in two journal publications (accepted for publication in the second year of the project).
The third phase is concerned with the varied display of the perception and manifestation of identity by members of social structures in the late Middle Ages and the seventeenth century, where identity will be understood as the opposition of a defined Other. The researcher will investigate the self-defining processes in both discussed communities (as well as mutual definitions of seperate groups), as well as the degree to which such self-definiton was based on the sense of belonging to the same culture (as in the case of Lollards who constituted a seperate group withing the English society, and the puritans as an internally divided and uninified group). The most important identity determinants shaping the dominant group will be identified, and then then relations of this group to other religious, ethnic and social groups will be analyzed, where the non-dominating groups are identified by defining what belongs and what does not belong to the dominant group in terms of behaviours, people, ethical norms, religion and other social behaviours. It will be determined to what extent identity forms the Other, and to what extent it is formed by it. This objective will be completed in the third year of the project, and the outcomes will be presented on 1-2 international conferences, a few presentations and in one publication.
Project methodology
The methodology applied in the project is based on the premises of cultural studies (During 2005; Arcangeli 2011), which aim at the integration of various fields within the humanities. The main research method is a comparative analysis of texts of both periods. The texts will be compiled by means of a query (for primary and secondary sources, primary sources largely gathered with the use of the portable scanner/camera), in view of the particular objectives, with the use of selected theories and approaches.
The objectives will assume the following research methods:
1. Objective 1 - Establishing similarities and differences in the influence the perception of Otherness has on the formation and structures of a given community by:
a). A comparative analysis of texts from both periods in view of investigating the similarities and differences in definitions of the Other. The realization of the objective will be initiated by a library query in Great Britain, USA and Canada. At the outset, the following theories will be used:
anthropological projection theory (Cassier 1944) and the cultural relativism critique (Fabian 1983),
philosophical theories of the Other (Levinas 1969, Ricoeur 1992, Badiou 2000)
branches of sociology: sociology of deviance (strain theory, functional normative deviance and anomy - Merton 1967, 1976; differential association - Sutherland 1941) and sociology of crime (especially new takes on labelling theory - Farrington & Murray 2012).
These theories and approaches will allow for an extraction of the mechanisms of defining Otherness in the texts. They will then be set in their historical and cultural context with the use of sources describing Otherness and monstrocity in the late Middle Ages (e.g. Cohen 1999, 2001, 2003; Classen 2002), along with puritan definitons of Otherness and normative mechanisms (e.g.Reis 1997;Stannard 1979), in the spirit of New Historicism (e.g. Greenblatt & Gallagher 2000). The presentation of Otherness as a sin and/or crime will be investigated with the use of cultural approaches to sin (e.g. Newhauser 1983, Bloomfield 1952) as well as medieval (e.g.Syse-Reichsberg 2007; Aers 2000; Baraz 2003; Becker 2003) and puritan concepts of ethics (e.g.Todd 2002; Bremer 1995), in order to establish types and sub-types of Otherness.
b). Defining mechanisms of dealing with the Other in both periods.
A comparative analysis of texts with the use of theories from the field of anthropolgy and sociology of law (Altamira 2007, Clark 2012, Rosen 2006) will allow for the description of mechanisms behind the classification of deeds as sinful, criminal (or both). Theories from the field of sociology of punishment, especially retributivism (Zaibert 2006, White 2011) will be applied to determine the ideologies behind normative processes dealing with social and spiritual consequences of these deeds. The setting of the above mentioned mechanisms in their cultural and historical contexts with the use of sources describing normative processes in medieval England (e.g.Firey 2008; Kim 2006; Boboc 2006; Smail-Smail-Gibson 2009; Hannawalt-Wallace 1999) and the Puritan period in England and America in the seventeenth century (e.g.McManus 2009, Briggs-Harrison 1996; Parrington-Brown 2011), as well as those concerned with the manifestations of animosity towards groups and sub-groups seen as Other (e.g. Moore 1975; Ferreiro-Russell 1998) will allow the researcher to trace similarities between these phenomenons in the two discussed periods.
With the use of social control theory (Black 1983, 2004) and cultural research on punishment in both periods (e.g. Rusche-Kirchheimer 2003; Donnely-Diehl 2008; Dean 2001;Russell 1972) the similarities and differences in the assignation of punishments will be extracted.
c). Establishing the mechanisms of founding communities on tradition (in its percieved shape), with the use of theories concerned with Tajfel's social identity theory (1979; e.g. Capozza 2000, Hogg-Terry 2001, Burke 2006) and cultural history (Burke 2004, Arcangeli 2011) will allow to investigate how a sense of tradition influences the formation of new communities. By setting the texts in historical and cultural context (e.g.Fischer 1989) it will be possible to establish the most easily recognized characteristic features of English medieval culture, transferred on post-reformation puritan communities, and to determine the degree of the sense of identity with different groups as well as the influence this sense of identity has on the shaping of defence mechanisms of puritan communities (e.g. Fiske 2009).
2. Objective 2 - The creation and popularization of a new model for research on Otherness, and the research outcomes by:
a). An interpretation and analysis of texts compiled in the query with the use of a combination of outputs of various fields of the humanities: literary studies, sociology, anthropology, history, culture studies and psychology regarding the concept of the Other, identity and group processes. A model constituting of anthropological theories on religion and the sociological theories on deviance and anomy, along with theories on crime and punishment, all set within the cultural time theory (critique of cultural relativism) will be useful not only for literary schiolars, but also historians, sociologists and all scholars interested in the English tradition of concept of Otherness. The addition of theories from the sociology of law, history of ethics and evolutionary psychology of religion will further open the outcomes of this project to an interdisciplinary audience, and by setting the discussed texts within their historical and cultural context the project will offer a new model for the investigation of the concept of Otherness in the literatures of chronologically disconnected historical periods.
b).The creation of a corpus of texts concerned with the idea of the Other, popularizing research outcomes (the selection of texts), and offering access to the research sample for other researchers in the field. An anthology of the research sample texts will be compiled to the same effect, offering a practical source both for a preliminary reading, and aiding more advanced research.
“Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge”
Plato
Primary sources
Check out the project's online corpus (database) to view the list of primary sources that constitute the research sample of this project: http://otherness.netux.ayz.pl/titles.html#list
Secondary sources
Armstrong, Nancy - Leonard Tennenhouse. 1994. The Imaginary Puritan: Literature, Intellectual Labor, and the Origins of Personal Life. Berkeley and Los Angeles: California University Press.
Aers, David. 2000. Faith, Ethics, and Church: Writing in England, 1360-1409. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
Arcangeli, Aleesandro. 2011. Cultural history: A concise introduction. London: Routledge.
Burke, Peter. 2004. What is cultural history? Cambridge: Polity.
Burke, Peter. 2006. Contemporary Social Psychological Theories. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Burke, Donald. 2006. New England New Jerusalem: The Millenarian Dimension of Transatlantic Migration. A Study in the Theology of History. PhD dissertation Wayne State University; digitized by ProQuest.
Bach, Rebecca Ann. 2000. Colonial Transformations: The Cultural Production of the New Atlantic World, 1580-1640. New York: Palgrave.
Badiou, Alain. 2000. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, tr. by Peter Hallward. New York: Verso.
Bloomfield, Morton W. 1952. The Seven Deadly Sins. Michigan: Michigan State College Press.
Baraz, Daniel. 2003. Medieval Cruelty: Changing Perceptions, Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Becker, Charlotte B. – Lawrence C. Becker. 2003. A History of Western Ethics. New York: Routledge.
Bremer, Francis J. 1995. The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards. Lebanon: UPNE.
Boboc, Andreea Delia. 2006. Justice on Trial: Judicial Abuse and Acculturation in Late Medieval English Literature, 1381-1481. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
Briggs, John; Christopher Harrison, Angus McInnes, David Vincent. 1996. Crime and Punishment in England, 1100-1990: An Introductory History. Palgrave Macmillan.
Black, Donald. 1983. “Crime as Social Control”. American Sociological Review, Vol. 48, No. 1, (Feb., 1983), pp. 34-45.
Black, Donald. 2004. “Violent Structures” in: Zahn, Margaret A., Henry H. Brownstein, Shelly L. Jackson (eds.) 2004.
Caldwell, Patricia. 1983. The Puritan Conversion Narrative: The Beginnings of American Expression. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cressy, David. 1987. Coming Over: Migration and Communication Between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Cassier, Ernst. 1944. An Essay on Man. New Haven: Yale University Press
Conforti, Joseph A. 2001. Imagining New England: Explorations of Regional Identity from the Pilgrims to the Mid-Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. 2006. Hybridity, Identity, And Monstrosity in Medieval Britain: On Difficult Middles. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. 1999. Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. 2003. Medieval Identity Machine. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome (ed). 2001. The Postcolonial Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Classen, Albrecht. 2002. Meeting the foreign/er in the Middle Ages: xenological approaches in medieval phenomena. New York: Routledge.
Capozza, Dora – Rupert Brown. 2000. Social Identity Processes: Trends in Theory and Research. London: SAGE Publications.
Clark, David S. 2012. Comparative Law and Society. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.
Delbanco, Andrew, Alan Heimert 1985. The Puritans in America: A Narrative Anthology Harvard University Press.
Delbanco, Andrew. 1991. The Puritan Ordeal. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Desmond, William. 2003. Art, Origins and Otherness: Between Philosophy and Art. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Donovan, James M. 2008. Legal anthropology: an introduction. Plymouth: Altamira Press.
Donnelly, Mark P.; Daniel Diehl. 2008. The Big Book of Pain: Torture and Punishment Through History. Stroud: Sutton Publishing.
Dean, Trevor. 2001.Crime in medieval Europe, 1200-1550. New York: Longman.
Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. Columbia
University Press.
Farrington, David P. – Joseph Murray. 2012. Labeling Theory: Empirical Tests. Transaction Publishing.
Firey, Abigail. 2008. A New History of Penance. Leiden: BRILL.
Ferreiro, Alberto - Jeffrey Burton Russell.1998. The Devil, Heresy, and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey B. Russell. Leiden: BRILL.
Fischer, David Hackett. 1989. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fiske, Susan T. 2009. Social Beings: Core Motives in Social Psychology. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Greenblatt, Stephen – Catherine Gallagher. 2000. Practicing New Historicism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Games, Alison. 1999. Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Gunn, Giles 1979. The Interpretation of Otherness: Literature, Religion and the American Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gregerson, Linda - Susan Juster (eds.) 2011. Empires of God: Religious Encounters in the Early Modern Atlantic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Hall, David D. 1989. Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Hall, David D. 1990. The Antinomian Controversy of 1636-1638: A Documentary History. Duke University Press.
Hall, David D. (ed.).1997. Lived Religion in America. Princeton University Press.
Hall, David D., Hugh Amory, (eds.) 2000. The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hall, David. 2004. Puritans in the New World: A Critical Anthology. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hallam, Elizabeth - Brian V. Street.(eds.) 2000. Cultural Encounters: Representing Otherness. Oxon: Routledge.
Hanawalt, Barbara, David Wallace (eds.) 1999. Medieval Crime and Social Control. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hogg, Michael A. – Deborah J. Terry. 2001. Social identity processes in organizational contexts. Philadelphia: Psychology Press.
Kalaga, Wojciech – Marzena Kubisz (eds.) 2008. Multicultural dilemmas: identity, difference, otherness. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Kim, Onyoo Elizabeth.2006. Law and Criminality in the Middle Ages: Academic Essays. New York: The Hermit Kingdom Press.
Laplanche, Jean. 1999. Essays on Otherness. London: Routledge.
Lewycky, Nadine – Adam David Morton. 2012. Getting along: Religious identities and confessional relations in Early Modern England – Essays in Honour of Professor W.J. Sheils. Farnham: Asghate Publishing Ltd.
Loewenstein, David - John Marshall (eds.) 2009. Heresy, Literature, and Politics in Early Modern English Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and infinity. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Time and the Other. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
McManus, Edgar J.2009.(1993). Law and Liberty in Early New England: Criminal Justice and Due Process, 1620-1692. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Merton, Robert K. 1967. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: The Free Press.
Miller, Perry - Thomas H. Johnson (eds.). 2001. [1963] The Puritans: A Sourcebook of Their Writings. Toronto: General Publishing Company.
Miller, Perry. 1953. The New England Mind: From Colony to Province. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Miller, Perry G., 1983 (1939) The New England Mind: From Colony to Province. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Miller, Joseph Hillis. 2001. Others. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Moore, R. I. 1975. The Birth of Popular Heresy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Newhauser, Richard (ed.) 2007. The Seven Deadly Sins: From Communities to Individuals. Leiden: BRILL.
Parrington, Vernon Louis; Bruce Brown. 2011. Liberalism, Puritanism and the Colonial Mind: Main Currents in American Thought, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.
Rusche, Georg, Otto Kirchheimer, Georg Rusche, Dario Melossi.2003. Punishment & Social Structure. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.
Reichberg, Gregory M. - Henrik Syse (eds.). 2007. Ethics, Nationalism, and Just War: Medieval and Contemporary Perspectives. Washington: CUA Press.
Reis, Elizabeth Sarah. 1997. Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Ricoeur, Paul. 1992. Oneself as another. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rosen, Lawrence. 2006. Law as culture: an invitation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Russell, Jeffrey Burton. 1972.Witchcraft in the Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Simão, Lívia – Jaan Valsiner. 2007. Otherness in question: Labyrinths on the Self. Charlotte: Information Age Pub.
Schwab, Gabriele 1996. The Mirror and the Killer-Queen: Otherness in Literary Language.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Sutherland, Edwin. 1947. Principles in criminology. 4th ed. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott.
Stannard, David E. 1979. The Puritan Way of Death: A Study in Religion, Culture, and Social Change. Oxford University Press.
Smail, Daniel Lord, Kelly Gibson. 2009. Vengeance in Medieval Europe: A Reader. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Sollors, Werner. 1986. Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
Spickard, Paul R. 2007. Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity. New York: Routledge.
Tajfel, H. 1974. ‘Social identity and intergroup behaviour’. Social Science Information, 13, p.65-93.
Wallace, Dewey D. 1987. The Spirituality of the Later English Puritans: An Anthology. Macon: Mercier University Press.
White, Mark D. 2011. Retributivism: Essays on Theory and Policy. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.
Tomlins, Christopher. 2010. Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wetherell, Margaret- Chandra Talpade Mohanty. 2010. The SAGE Handbook of Identities. London: SAGE Publications.
Zaibert, Leo. 2006. Punishment and Retribution. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.
Zahn, Margaret A., Henry H. Brownstein, Shelly L. Jackson (eds.) 2004. Violence: From Theory to Research. Elsevier.
Transcriptions
A part of the project's research sample can be found under this google drive link. Shpuld you like to see more, or if you have any questions regarding these texts, please contact me via this website's contact form.
This is the link (please copy and paste it into your browser): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16Ynha41SqJniAjUgxEbcuyHVnHJc-YVj?usp=sharing
Publications
Please visit the principal investigator's ResearchGate website for a list of publications and updates on publications that arose from this project: https://www.researchgate.net/project/Aspects-of-Otherness-and-traces-of-late-medieval-religiosity-in-the-literature-of-seventeenth-century-Puritan-communities-in-England-and-America-NCN-grant-2013-09-N-HS2-02213
The most important publication will be the anthology of late medieval and puritan (Protestant) approaches to Otherness entitled "The Devil’s mortal weapons: an anthology of late medieval and Protestant vernacular theology and popular culture", forthcoming with the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.
This is the book's description:
Intersections between the tradition of late medieval England and early modern English Protestantism are of great interest in contemporary studies of history. The most complex, and most dynamically developing area of this field is concerned with the extent to which the Reformation changed the late medieval world. However, many contributions to scholarship dealing with this subject (e.g. Duffy 1992; Walsham 2006; Bossy 1988; Maldoon 2013, Cummings and Simpson 2010), while thorough and influential, do not discuss the connections between seventeenth-century Protestantism and the late Middle Ages otherwise than in passing. And yet, as pointed out by many scholars (e.g. Lake and Michael Questier 2002; Lake and Fincham 2006; Miller 1939, 1953; Tawney 1926; Zafirovski 2007ab, 2009; White 1978), Protestantism was highly indebted to late medieval religious literature and practices, as these influenced the emergence of English Protestant identity in the early modern period. My book wishes to address this negligence by offering a substantial research sample that highlights the complex relationship between early modern Protestant literature and the English late medieval past, bridging scholarship on both fields for a better understanding of the origins, and nature, of early modern English Protestantism.
My primary aim is thus to illustrate selected areas of Protestant engagement with the English pre-Reformation past, culture, and tradition by facilitating access to a substantial research sample combining texts of both periods in one volume, and to become a source for further research for students and scholars in this dynamically developing field. Texts included in the anthology are grouped into pairs, each of which contains a late medieval and a Protestant work, in order to illustrate both continuity and discontinuity between pre- and post-Reformation approaches to selected issues. The anthology includes only late medieval texts printed and re-printed in the early modern period, as those were more widely available to post-medieval audiences. All excerpts are the author’s original transcriptions from selected primary sources.
The anthology consists of an introduction, which first outlines previous scholarly interest in reconciling the study of pre- and post-Reformation England history and tradition. Then, the introduction deals with the general Protestant interest in the pre-Reformation English past and its textual output, and the extent, motivation, and development of this interest. Finally, the introduction describes the historical and cultural understanding of Otherness as applied throughout the book (as defined by Ricoeur (1969, 1986, 1992), Levinas (1969ab), and Gupta & Chattopadhyaya (1998): a notion familiar to audiences of both periods, and influential to the formation of their cultural tradition), and contains also a detailed description of the book’s contents. The main body of the anthology is divided into two parts, organized thematically: Part I, which groups texts focused on the soul, emotions, and spiritual health (‘spiritual’ Otherness); and Part II which focuses on body, mind, and physical health (‘physical’, or ‘external’, Otherness). Both parts illustrate a variety of late medieval and Protestant conceptions of Otherness, and include texts describing these ‘threats’ as well as remedies to them. Each part ends with a Further Reading section which lists both primary and secondary sources suggested as material that will productively expand research on the subject of every section of the book. The Further Reading section is intended to replace the standard ‘works cited’ bibliography, because I consider such a solution clearer and more readable, particularly to students: the division of Further Reading in accordance with the sections of the book makes finding the relevant additional primary and secondary sources much easier. Additionally, for each text excerpted in the anthology relevant footnotes provide both citations and further reading recommended specifically for that text, and can thus be easily consulted by the reader at any given time, as opposed to the reader having to consult the bibliography and then determine which of the sources listed there seems relevant to a text they find of interest.
The table of contents of the book is as follows:
Acknowledgments
Notes on sources and editorial conventions
Introduction:
Protestantism, historiography, and Protestant identities
The Protestant engagement with the English medieval past
Vernacular theology and Protestantism
Medieval Catholicism, devotional literature, and Protestantism
Periodization
The structure of the present book
Part 1
Soul
Seven Deadly Sins
William Caxton, This book was compyled and made atte requeste of kyng Phelyp of Fraunce (1486)
Richard Baxter, A Christian directory (1673)
Here begynneth a matere spekynge of a place that is named the abbaye of the holy ghost (1496)
John Moore, A mappe of mans mortalitie (1617)
Here begynneth a boke of a ghoostly fader that confesseth his ghoostly chylde (1521)
The nine mortal weapons (1650)
Sins of the Tongue and Mouth
The example of euyll tongues (1525)
William Gearing, A bridle for the tongue (1663)
Stephen Hawes, The conuercyon of swerers (1509)
Richard Younge, A hopefull way to cure that horrid sinne of swearing (1652)
Here begynneth a lytyll new treatyse or mater intytuled [and] called the .ix. drunkardes (1523)
A timely vvarning to drunkards (1673)
Emotion
Fear of the wrath of God, the End of Days, and the Devil
Here beginneth a lytel treatyse the whiche speketh of the xv. tokens the whiche shullen bee shewed afore ye drefull daye of judgement (1505)
The Doome Warning all men to the Iudgemente (1581)
Thomas Wimbledon, A sermon no lesse fruitefull then famous (1599) [1388]
Increase Mather, Heaven’s alarm to the world (1682)
Here begynneth the byrthe and lyfe of the moost false and deceytfull Antechryst (1525)
A true and plaine genealogy or pedigree of Antichrist (1634)
Death, anxiety, and sorrow
Denis the Carthusian, Here after foloweth the prologue of the foure last thynges (1480)
Simon Birkbek, A treatise of the four last things (1655)
William Caxton, Here begynneth a lityll treatise shorte and abredged spekynge of the arte and crafte to knowe well to dye (1490)
Nicolas Bernard, The penitent death of a woefull sinner (1642)
Spiritual health
Confession and contrition
William Lichfield, The remors of conscyence (1510)
Christopher Love, The penitent pardoned (1657)
John Goodale, A lytell treatise called the murrour or looking glasse of lyfe (1532)
John Ball, A short treatise (1637)
Comfort and consolation
John Ryckes, The ymage of loue (1525)
John Duncon, The returnes of spiritual comfort and grief (1648)
William Flete, The remedy ayenst the troubles of temptacyons (1508)
Obadiah Sedgwick, The doubting beleever (1641)
Curing Spiritual Disease
The Dyetary of ghostly helthe (1523)
John Downame, Spiritual physicke to cure the diseases of the soule (1613)
Jacobus de Gruytrode, The mirroure of golde for the synfull soule (1506)
Thomas Brooks, The silent soul (1659)
Further Reading
Part 2
Body
Women and men
Guillaume Alexis, He [sic] begynneth an interlocucyon, with an argument, betwyxt man and woman (1525)
Cotton Mather, Ornaments for the daughters of Zion (1692)
Strangers in foreign lands
Here begynneth a lytell treatyse of the turkes lawe called Alcaron (1519)
Johannes Maurus, The confusion of Muhamed’s sect (1652)
John Mandeville, Here begynneth a lytell treatyse or booke named Johan Maundeuyll (1499)
Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimage (1614)
Of the newe landes and of ye people founde by the messengers of the kynge of Portuygale (1510)
Richard Hayklut, The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation (1600)
Mind
The Evil and Ignorant Mind
This tretyse is of loue and spekyth of iiij of the most specyall louys (1493)
John Sheffield, The sinfulnesse of evil thoughts (1659)
Paul Bush, Here begynneth a lytell treatyse in Englysshe, called the extripacion of ignorancy (1526)
William Gearing, The arraignment of ignorance (1659)
Vices and virtues of the mind
John Larke, The boke of wysdome (1532)
A Discourse of the repugnancy of sin to the principles of universal reason (1679)
Andrew Chertsey, Here foloweth a notable treatyse and full necessary to an crysten men (1502)
Levinus Lemnius, The touchstone of complexions (1633)
Health
Preventing disease
John of Burgundy, In this tretyse that is cleped Gouernayle of helthe (1490)
Humphrey Brooke, Hygieinne, or A conservatory of health (1650)
The grete herball (1526)
Thomas Cogan, The haven of health (1636)
Disease
Johannes Jacobi, A passing gode lityll boke (1485)
Stephen Hobbes, A nevv treatise of the pestilence (1603)
Curing disease
Thomas Moulton, This is the myrrour or glasse of helth (1531)
Joseph du Chesne, The practise of chymicall, and hermeticall physicke (1605)
Further Reading
