ENGL31072 / 61072: WRITING THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE AGE OF
SHAKESPEARE (2013-14)
A PRELIMINARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Texts
The set pamphlet texts will all be available in the free course handbook (electronically also on Blackboard). If you want to read some of them, though, before the course begins, most can only be accessed through EEBO (Early English Books Online) which can be accessed through the library databases. You will need to buy the play-texts (marked with an asterisk below).
Monsters
Anon., The true descripcion of a childe with ruffes borne in the parish of Micheham
(1566)
Ghosts
Anon., Sad and wonderful newes from the faulcon at the bank side (1661)
Anon., The Examination and Confession of certain Wytches (1566)
Anon., A rehearsal both straung and true (1579)
Anon., The wonderful discovery of the witchcrafts of Margaret and Philip Flower
(1619)
Henry Goodcole, The wonderfull discoverie of Elizabeth Sawyer, a Witch (1621)
*William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford, The Witch of Edmonton (written
c.1621; published 1658)
Magic and magicians
*Christopher Marlowe, Dr Faustus
*William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Fairies
Moses Pitt, An account of one Ann Jefferies (1696)
*William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Criticism and context
Fuller bibliographies will be available week by week, but here is a guide to getting started. You will not want to read everything here! Pick what is most appropriate for your interests and your chosen essay topic. You will probably want to get the books from the library rather than buying them. Don't forget also to check out the fuller, week by week bibliographies.
History, culture, society
Gender
Mark Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England (1996)
Amanda Capern, The Historical Study of Women: England, 1500-1700 (2008)
Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500 -1800 (1995)
Ann Hughes, Gender and the English Revolution (Routledge, 2012)
Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England (1998)
Stephen Orgel, Impersonations: the Performance of Gender in Shakespeare's England
(1996)
Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (2003).
Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 (1977)
Patrick Collinson, The Reformation (2003)
Frances Dolan, Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender and Seventeenth-century
Print Culture (2nd ed,, 2005)
Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (1972)
Jerome Friedman, Miracles and the Pulp Press during the English Revolution: the
Battle of the Frogs and Fairford's Flies (UCL Press, 1993)
Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason and Religion 1200-1750
(2010)
David Cressy, Agnes Bowker's Cat: Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and
Stuart England (2001).
Lorraine Daston, 'Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern Europe'
(Critical Inquiry 18, 1991), pp. 93-124.
Darren Oldridge, Strange Histories: the trial of the pig, the walking dead, and other
matters of fact from the mediaeval and Renaissance worlds (2005)
Roberta Barker, '"An honest dog yet": Performing The Witch of Edmonton' (Early
Theatre 12, 2009), pp. 163-182.
William E. Burns, An Age of Wonders: Prodigies, Politics and Providence in England
1657-1727 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2002)
William E. Burns, 'Signs of the Times: Thomas Jackson and the Controversy over
Prodigies in the Reign of Charles I' (Seventeenth Century 11, 1996, pp. 21-33)
Christopher Durston, 'Signs and Wonders and the English Civil War' (History Today
37,1987, pp. 22-8)
Jerome Friedman, Miracles and the Pulp Press during the English Revolution: the
Battle of the Frogs and Fairford's Flies (UCL Press, 1993)
Anne Dunan Page, 'Le châtiment de Dorothy Mately: mise en livre des histories de
jugement à la Restauration' (Bulletin de la Société d'études anglo-américaines
des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles 50, 2000), pp. 31-49.
Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 1999).
Blair Worden, 'Providence and Politics in Cromwellian England' (Past and Present
109, 1985), pp. 55-99.
Monstrous births
Alan W. Bates, Emblematic Monsters: Unnatural Conceptions and Deformed Births
in Early Modern Europe (Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2005).
Marion Gibson, Reading Witchcraft (1999)
Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History: Early Modern and 20th-century Representations
(1996)
Emma Wilby, Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions
in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic (2005)
Deborah Willis, Malevolent Nurture: Witch-hunting and maternal power in early
modern England (1995)
P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, Wizards: a History (2004)
Ian McAdam, Magic and Masculinity in Early Modern English Drama (2009)
John S. Mebane, Renaissance magic and the return of the golden age: the occult
tradition and Marlowe, Jonson and Shakespeare (1989)
Wayne Shumaker, The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance: a Study in Intellectual
Patterns (1972)
Roger Lancelyn Green, 'Shakespeare and the Fairies' (Folklore 73, 1962), pp. 89-103.
Mary Ellen Lamb, 'Taken by the fairies: fairy practices and the production of popular
culture in A Midsummer Night's Dream' (Shakespeare Quarterly 51, 2000),
pp.277-312.
Wendy Wall, 'Why does Puck sweep? Fairylore, Merry Wives, and Social Struggle'
(Shakespeare Quarterly 52, 2001), pp. 67-106.
