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Deviants and Dissenters in Early Modern England

Module description

How societies define and create deviants and dissenters can tell us a great deal about those societies: what they value and seek to promote and encourage is inevitably also revealed through what they seek to discourage or stamp out. This module explores who were the people, and groups of people, who deviated in some way from the ‘norms’ of early modern society, or who disagreed with its political, religious, legal, economic, and medical institutions and tenets, and why. It will further examine what it meant to be defined or categorised in this way. What kinds of ideas and beliefs might place a person or people on the margins of early modern English society and culture? What were the consequences of espousing such ideas or beliefs, or of acting on them? But deviance could also be experienced through the body: what bodily appearances, practices and behaviours might similarly place you on the margins of early modern society? These are the kinds of questions you will explore in this module, using a wide range of primary sources, which will provide a foundation for thinking about those you might examine in your dissertation research next year. You will also have the opportunity to develop your debating skills, and to synthesise and substantiate arguments as you build your own ideas about these often contested areas of historical study.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module aims to:

• Develop your skills in researching, interpreting, and analysing both primary and secondary material, and in reporting on your work
• Explore an area of history in more depth, and develop the depth of understanding you will require to study more specialised areas of history
• Work in a team on group tasks.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Be aware of the various developments in the histories of deviance and dissent, outsiders and outcasts, and marginalisation
• 2. Make a close evaluation of the key developments and debates in this area of historical enquiry
• 3. Evaluate the main themes in the subject and to collate information upon, and evaluate in greater detail, those aspects of the module discussed in seminar and especially those topics selected by students for their coursework

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. Analyse the key developments in this subject area
• 5. Collate data from a range of sources, both primary and secondary
• 6. Interpret primary sources
• 7. Trace long-term as well as short-term historical developments
• 8. Recognise and deploy historical terminology correctly
• 9. Assess different approaches to historical writing in areas of controversy

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 10. Work both independently and in a group, including participating in oral seminar discussions
• 11. Identify a topic, select, comprehend, and organise primary and secondary materials on that topic with little guidance
• 12. Produce to a deadline and in examination conditions a coherent argument

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• Religious dissenters: Protestant sects, Catholics, Jews, and atheists
• Political dissenters: radicals and rebels, plots and protests
• Social deviance: the poor, the masterless, travellers, criminals, witches
• Sexual deviance: same-sex desire, non-human and coerced sexual encounters, prostitution, and illicit sex
• Bodily differences: disability and disfigurement, disease, race and ethnicity, gender and age

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Eamon Duffy,  The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village   (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001)
• Anthony Fletcher and J. Stevenson (eds), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1985)
• John C. Fout (ed.), Forbidden History: The State, Society, and the Regulation of Sexuality in Modern Europe , (Chicago and London, 1992)
• Erica Fudge, ‘Monstrous Acts: Bestiality in Early Modern England’, in History Today , (2000), 50:8, 20-25
• Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Moral panics: the social construction of deviance ( Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)
• Robert Jütte, Poverty and deviance in early modern Europe (Cambridge: CUP, 1994)
• K.J. Kesselring, The Northern Rebellion of 1569: Faith, politics and protest in Elizabethan England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
• Jon Oplinger, The Politics of Demonology: the European witchcraze and the mass production of deviance ( Selinsgrove; London: Susquehanna University Press; Associated University Presses, 1990)
• Julie Peakman (ed.), Sexual Perversions, 1670-1890 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
• Paul Slack (ed.), Rebellion, Popular Protest and the Social Order in early modern England (Cambridge: CUP, 1984)
• Jonathan Schorsch Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: CUP, 2004)
• Margaret Spufford (ed.), The World of Rural Dissenters, 1520-1725 (Cambridge: CUP, 1995)
• Nicholas Tyacke (ed.),  England’s Long Reformation 1500-1800   (London, 1998)

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=11333 
• Early English Books Online (EEBO) – University of Exeter Electronic Resources
• Old Bailey Proceedings Online - http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/forms/formMain.jsp
• English Broadside Ballad Archive (EBBA) - http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/
• Broadside Ballads Online - http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

Key words search

Deviance, deviants, dissent, dissenters, outsiders, margins, marginalisation, marginalised, disability, disfigurement, perversion, illegitimate