Key Texts
Key Texts is a postgraduate series that seeks to re-think which texts occupy places in our teaching and research. Each post takes a single text as its subject, making the case for its status as a ‘key text’. In some cases, this involves celebrating essays vital to the development of an academic discipline, in others, excavating sixteenth-century publications that have been long overlooked. In all instances, posts ask us to reflect upon our disciplinary canons, and on the voices and experiences we choose to amplify. In what directions is early modern studies headed? Which texts need to be part of its future? Encompassing canonical and non-canonical texts, as well as a range of primary and secondary materials, this series begins to suggest some possible answers to these questions.
The Declaration
Basil Bowdler explores the secret creation and widespread dissemination of The Declaration of His Highness William Henry, a 5,000-word pamphlet at the centre of arguably the most successful propaganda campaign in early modern European history. All-but forgotten today, the text was circulated in astonishing numbers and, as Bowdler makes clear, it ‘bears vigil to the European influence in the development of Britain’s parliamentary democracy’.
Room For The Cobler of Gloucester
Anna Pravdica recovers the veritable cartload of Ralph Wallis’ now largely forgotten 1668 pamphlet, Room For The Cobler of Gloucester. Well-known in its own time, and enjoying cultural currency well into the 18th-century, the pamphlet, as Pravdica demonstrates, has much to tell us about religion, politics, social status, community, and family from the Civil Wars through to the Restoration and beyond.
Use the Word Cloud to group posts by shared theme. You can reset your filter by clicking here.
- Annotation
- Attribution
- Authorship
- Belief
- Bestseller
- Book History
- Calvin
- Censorship
- Clergy
- Collaboration
- Copyright
- Craft
- Diplomacy
- Education
- Emotion
- Essay
- Europe
- Everyday
- Experimentation
- Faith
- Family
- Friendship
- Gender
- History
- Homosocial
- Humanism
- Illustration
- Innovation
- Knowledge
- Law
- Marginalia
- Market
- Medicine
- Nonconformist
- Pamphlet
- Parliament
- Persona
- Poetics
- Poetry
- Politics
- Propaganda
- Public
- Reading
- Recipes
- Reformation
- Religion
- Restoration
- Revolution
- Science
- Selfhood
- Sonnet
- Status
- Translation
- Uncertainty
- Voice
- Witchcraft
- Women
Or search the series by way of a term or phrase of your choice:
Key Texts Image Bibliography
A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner: ‘A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner’, appended to Jean Calvin, Sermons de Jehan Calvin, trans. Anne Lock (London, 1560). LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Compendium Maleficarum: Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium maleficarum (Mediolani [i.e. Milan], 1608), octavo (Sp Coll Ferguson Ao-a.60). Image: Glasgow University Library.
Declaration of His Highness William Henry: The Declaration of his Highness William Henry (The Hague, 1688). Image courtesy Leiden University.
How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy: Titus Livius Patavini [Livy], T. Liuii Patauini Romanae historiae principis decades tres (Basel, 1555). Princeton University Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, South East (RB) (Ex) PA6452. A2 1555q.
Room For The Cobler of Gloucester And His Wife: Ralph Wallis, Room For The Cobler of Gloucester And His Wife With Several Cartloads of Abominable Irregular, pitiful stinking Priests (London, 1668). Courtesy of the British Library, digitized by Google Books project.
The Secrets: Secreti, The Secrets of the Reverend Maister Alexis of Piemont (London, 1595). Public Domain.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona: William Shakespeare, ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’ in Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (London, 1623). LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection.
Editor: Jonathan Powell (2023)