Tag: Early Modern History
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Review: The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance
Written by Melissa Kane. Examining the recent work by acclaimed Renaissance scholar Catherine Fletcher, ‘The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance’, Melissa Kane questions. the extent to which it rightly can be called an alternative history.
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The National Covenant and the Covenanter’s Prison: Religion and Edinburgh
Written by Amy Hendrie. Edinburgh’s historical significance has often been tied with its religious significance. Amy Hendrie investigates one of the darker periods of this history in one of Edinburgh’s most famous sites: Greyfriars Kirkyard.
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Misogyny: The Driving Force of the Great European Witch-Hunts from the Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries
Written by Sophia Aiello. The Witch Trials of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries have been well studied, but what role did misogyny have in this crisis, and how did the stereotype of the ‘witch’ develop?
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Witches by Weather: The Impact of Climate in Early Modern Witch Trials
Written by Melissa Kane. Dramatic changes in climate have for a long time demanded an explanation. Melissa Kane explores how the European Witch Trials became tied to the storms and cold of the ‘Little Ice Age’, as yet more proof of malicious deviancy.
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Auld Reekie Riots: The Story of Captain Porteous
Written by Amy Hendrie. Captain John Porteous represented to Edinburgh’s underclasses a distinct inequality of treatment by the ruling elite. But how did the public reaction align with the crime?, And why were his actions so controversial?
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Review: Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell (2020)
Written by Melissa Kane. Maggie O’Farrell’s is a magisterial text. The writing is sublime, bringing to life Elizabethan Stratford-upon-Avon. However, it is a difficult text and requires a degree of familiarity with its inspiration, Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
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The Morning Star: Philippe I Duc d’Orléans Reconsidered
Written by Hazel Atkinson. The life of Philippe I Duc d’Orléans has been treated with pity and contempt by historians, on account of his lack of conformity to both early modern and modern notions of masculinity. But when re-considered, we can learn much about Philippe’s life, and how he was regarded by those around him.
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The Four Humours: Understandings of the Body in Medieval Medicine
Written by Amy Hendrie. Popular conceptions of the Middle Ages as cruel and gruesome extend to ideas about medieval medicine. But the medieval understanding of the body was steeped in history, and likely extended into modernity more than one would think.
Retrospect Journal 