Dangerous Familiars : Representations of Domestic Crime in England, 1550 - 1700 / Frances E. Dolan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dolan, Frances E., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Crime--England--History--17th century.

Crime.

Crime--England--History--16th century.

England--Social conditions--17th century.

England.

England--Social conditions--16th century.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (270 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, [2016]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Looking back at images of violence in the popular culture of early modern England, we find that the specter of the murderer loomed most vividly not in the stranger, but in the familiar; and not in the master, husband, or father, but in the servant, wife, or mother. A gripping exploration of seventeenth-century accounts of domestic murder in fact and fiction, this book is the first to ask why. Frances E. Dolan examines stories ranging from the profoundly disturbing to the comically macabre: of husband murder, wife murder, infanticide, and witchcraft. She surveys trial transcripts, confessions, and scaffold speeches, as well as pamphlets, ballads, popular plays based on notorious crimes, and such well-known works as The Tempest, Othello, Macbeth, and The Winter's Tale. Citing contemporary analogies between the politics of household and commonwealth, she shows how both legal and literary narratives attempt to restore the order threatened by insubordinate dependents.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

I. "Home-rebels and House-traitors": Petty Treason and the Murderous Wife

II. The Subordinate('s) Plot: Petty Treason and the Forms of Domestic Rebellion

III. Revolutions, Petty Tyranny, and the Murderous Husband

IV. Finding What Has Been "Lost": Representations oflnfanticide and The Winter's Ta/.e

V. Witchcraft and the Threat of the Familiar

Epilogue

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed Feb. 24, 2017)

ISBN:

9781501707278

1501707272

9781501707285

1501707280

OCLC:

1016747456