J.P.SOMMERVILLE

 

Schedule of Topics:

 

 

Readings for each week are listed below; either read them online or print them out. Your term paper will need to cite at least two printed books and/ or articles (plus as many web sites as you like) in addition to these readings. Here are three books that you might find useful, both in doing your term paper and more generally; all are available on reserve in College Library: (1) Keith Wrightson, English Society 1580-1680; (2) Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic; (3) J. P. Sommerville, Royalists and Patriots. Politics and Ideology in England 1603-1640.

 

 

Lecture Topics

Documents & readings

1. Introduction: society and ideas (1/23-25)
     Part I
     Part II
Shakespeare on England
Who Was Shakespeare?
 by William Rubinstein
Britain in 1500
by Steven Gunn
Wrong Side of the River by Jessica Browner.
Elizabethan Life
2. English institutions (1/30-2/1)
    Monarchy and government
 
   The Church and Religion -I
    The Church and Religion - II
Britain in 1600 by John Miller
From David Hume's History of England

Elizabethan and Jacobean England

Bancroft - Survey
Barrow - Discovery
3. English society (2/6-8):
    Social structure
    Women in society
    The Family
    The Economy
   
Description Of Elizabethan England
English population
Cleaver & Dod - Household government

Macfarlane on Stone

4. Divine Right, Patriarchalism, Common Law and Constitutionalism (2/13-2/20):

    The Divine Right of Kings - I
    The Divine Right of Kings - II

    Filmer's patriarchalism
    Common Law


Mocket - God and the King
Filmer - Patriarcha
James - Speech to Parliament
Hedley - Speech to Parliament

Patriarchalism, Politics and Mass Attitudes in Stuart England, Gordon J. Schochet
5. Contract, Resistance, and Parliament (2/22-2/27):
    Protestant resistance theory
    Catholic resistance theory

Vindiciae contra tyrannos
John Floyd - God and the king

Manetsch - The Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre

 3/1: FIRST MIDTERM, IN CLASS

6. The Onset of Civil War (3/6-3/13):


Early Stuart England:

Parliamentarian and Royalist  theory in the Civil Wars (1642-6) and Interregnum (1649-60)

 



Buckingham in verse
Prynne Histrio-mastix
Cornwallis - On alehouses
Smith - On Noah's drunkenness
Spelman - Considerations
Parker - Observations
Ascham - Discourse & Bounds

Weston - English Constitutional Doctrines  The Theory of Mixed Monarchy under Charles I

7. Political and Religious Radicals (3/15-3/20):
    Levellers and Diggers
    Other religious radicals

An Agreement of the people
Denne - The Levellers design
Wood - The Levellers (falsely so called)


Levellers and sects in verse

Dell - Building of the Church
Winstanley - Letter to Fairfax
Coppe - A Fiery Flying Roll

Kishlansky - The Army and the Levellers: The Roads to Putney

 

8. Republicans and Whigs (3/22-29):
    Harrington, Sidney and Locke

Harrington - Oceana Excerpts
Sidney - Speech on the scaffold
Wren - Monarchy asserted

J. G. A. Pocock - James Harrington and the Good Old Cause: A Study of the Ideological Context of His Writings

 

TERM PAPERS DUE 29 MARCH

 

SPRING BREAK: 3/31-4/8

9. Towards Modernity: Hobbes, Locke, Science, Religion and Toleration (4/10-4/20)
     Hobbes
     Hobbes II
     Religious Toleration

   
Hobbes - Excerpts
Coke - Survey of Hobbes
Ross - Leviathan drawn out
Objections answered
John Goodwin - Theomachia
Jeremy Taylor - Liberty of prohesying

Tom Sorell - Hobbes's Persuasive Civil Science
Perez Zagorin - Clarendon and Hobbes

4/17: SECOND MIDTERM, IN CLASS

10. Popular Culture (4/24-5/1):
    Providence and Prophecy

    Magic and Medicine
    Ghosts, fairies and omens
    Astrology
Francis Bacon, from Essay XXXV: Of Prophecies
Hilliard Fire from heaven
Miracle of Miracles
Corbet Ballad
Rudstone Prognostication
Foulweather Prognostication

Camden Astrology in Shakespeare's Day
Wright Astrology and Science in Seventeenth-Century England

11. Witchcraft (5/3-10)
     Prosecution and beliefs
     Dynamics and decline
Henry Holland A Treatise against witchcraft:
The Most wonderfull and true storie
Witches Apprehended, Examined and Executed
Reginald Scot, Discovery of witchcraft

Holmes, Women: Witnesses and Witches