Greetings! Here is the latest early modern Carnivalesque for your Sunday reading.
Historiography and methods
Wynken de Worde is building a syallabus for early modern book history
David Rundle examines responses (or non-responses) to claims of plagiarism in The Unacceptable Face of The English Face of Machiavelli?
Early Modern Online Bibliography has a discussion of Exploring reception history in Women Writers Online
Cultures: literary, visual, musical
Ptak has a fascinating post on ‘the overall full-body indexes, the general NYC subway map-like overlays on the entire body’: Mapping Humans, 1400-1759: Bloodletting, Moles, Bumps and the Stars.
At Bibliodyssey, you can gawp at the astonishingly beautiful Ottheinrich Bible, begun in the early 15th century and completed in the 16th.
Three Pipe Problem attempts to Unravel Giorgione’s ‘The Tempest’ (c.1505), and leans toward the theory of Waldemar Januszczak. Alberti’s Window, on the other hand, can’t find a satisfactory interpretation of the painting.
The History Woman is highly impressed by the V&A’s exhibition of Raphael’s Cartoons and Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel (though less impressed by the V&A’s admission policy).
Atrium Musicologicum surveys 16th-century music: The Spirit of the Renaissance .
Serendipities reviews ‘Printed images and the Reformation’ in Printed Images in Early Modern Britain (ed. by Michael Hunter, Ashgate, 2010).
Bibliodyssey is enchanted by Robert Fludd’s Temple of Music.
Gilbert Mabbot finds a 17th-century print Creepy. Indeed!
Whitney Trettien muses on A Blank Poem (1723); or, the Present of Absence: ‘…in short, blankness is sarcasm; it signifies the nothingness and “No Body” of what it’s supposed to celebrate.’
Of science and nature
William Eamon examines The Renaissance Curioso: ‘What did it mean to be a curious person in the Renaissance?’
Adrian Teal (guest posting at Dainty Ballerina) discusses Hops, Hogsheads and Horsepower, A Highly-Selective History of Beer. Mmm, beer…
Women in Medieval and Early Modern History has some Weird Science: Sex and Reproductive Knowledge in the Early Seventeenth Century, when pregnancy was still the subject of much uncertainty and strange beliefs.
Predicting the weather in the 17th century: A sign of great heat to follow (from Airs, Waters, Places) and If Mists arise out of Ponds (Dainty Ballerina).
Dainty Ballerina also brought us Strange news from the Deep, a mid 17th century account of a whale stranded in Essex (and this story of a 17th-century whale skeleton in London was in the news).
The Renaissance Mathematicus examines the life and work of the observational astronomer John Flamsteed (1646-1719) in Return of the stamp collector.
The Royal Society’s History of Science blog explores What scientists want: Robert Boyle’s to-do list.
Wonders and Marvels has a guest post by Jennifer Ouellette on Dangerous Curves: Maria Gaetana Agnesi, 18th-century polyglot, mathematician and nun.
The Artist’s Progress examines responses to the proposal of a Dog Tax in 1796. (It didn’t go down well.)
Jonathan Dresner examines The Lead Poisoning Thesis in Imperial Japan.
Crime and punishment
Executed Today looks at the hanging of Antonio Rinaldeschi, bad gambler for sacrilege in 1501: ‘passing an image of Holy Mother at the piazza Santa Maria de Alberighi, he gathered up some nearby dung and flung it at the sacred pic’.
Early Modern Whale surveys Thomas Barton’s ‘Brief Relation’ of the life and death of Thomas’s brother William, who was hanged for murder in 1661.
From the Hands of Quacks has begun a series of posts on The Criminalized Body: this one focuses on the 1752 Murder Act and public dissections in 18th-century Britain.
Early American Crime has the story of Thomas Mount (ex. for burglary in 1791) and the Flash Company.
Georgian London looks at Jeremy Bentham’s ideas for penal reform in The Birth of the Surveillance Society
Politics and people
Chaos Bogey has a digression on The Step Between covers Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell, sixteenth-century politics and the power of queens.
The National Library of Scotland’s Rare Books blog discusses Patrick Hamilton and the beginning of the Scottish Reformation.
Executed Today considers Anthony Babington‘s plot and execution in 1586.
Early Modern History quotes Clarendon on Sir John Coke (1563-1644), Charles I’s Secretary of State 1625-1640.
Mercurius Politicus notes an account of a curious portrait of Oliver Cromwell in It is I.
The Gentleman Administrator stalks Charles II during his exile in Jersey.
Boston 1775 goes in search of “One Dewksbury Who Lives about 4 Miles from You”, who (if anyone managed to find him) belonged to George Washington’s early intelligence network.
Vast Public Indifference traces a picture of the die-hard Whig family of The Littlest Martyr, Charles Pratt Marston, who died during the Boston siege of 1775-6.
The Artist’s Progress uncovers The Many Guises of Marie Antoinette in French caricature ‘from the first rustlings of revolution to her execution in 1793′.
And that’s it folks! Hope you enjoyed it…
Many thanks to Nandini Ramachandran, Jason of Executed Today, Nick Poyntz, William Eamon and Jonathan Dresner for sending in nominations. And apologies to the latter two, whose emails I managed to overlook in my inbox until after posting because I put them in the wrong folder.
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Don’t forget the History Carnival is coming soon, at Notes from the Field on 1 October – please send your nominations of the best history blogging since 1 August.
