Fertility and its Failure: An exploration of the early-modern animal and human contexts

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This project will explore the topic of early-modern fertility cultures in England. It will examine both human and animal fertility and its failure during the period 1560-1700. Using cultural history methodologies in combination with medical and gender history approaches, the student plans to examine a wide-ranging variety of primary sources. This will be necessary to establish a broad ranging account which assesses English (in)fertility as a whole with particular focus the spread of knowledge. management of problems, experience of emotions and cultural portrayal.This project will examine key aspects of human and animal fertility cultures in England between c.1560 and 1700. It will therefore ask a series of questions: How did medical practitioners and veterinarians (both formal and informal) learn about fertility and its management, and what were the methods by which this information was disseminated? What level of knowledge about human and animal fertility existed among the general population and how was it acquired? How did individuals manage their own experiences of (in)fertility, and that of their animals? What were the underlying beliefs and assumptions which shaped understandings of human and animal (in)fertility? How were the emotions experienced in relation to fertility and its failure? How were human and animal (in)fertility represented culturally and how did this vary in literary, visual and musical sources? In what ways was the representation of human (in)fertility gendered?Fertility and its failure are keystones of life yet have only received limited attention from early-modern historians. The importance of the subject has been understood by demographers like Wrigley and Schofield (1981), whose seminal studies identified fertility as the most significant factor underlying population change in the period. Political historians are also aware of its importance; seven of the ten Tudor and Stuart monarchs struggled or failed to conceive heirs. More recently, socio-cultural historians including Foyster and Berry (2009) and Oren-Magidor (2017) have assessed infertility. However much of the available literature focuses on precise aspects of experience - demographic trends, agricultural methods, political consequences, and medical cures - rather than on the overall topic. This project will attempt a more holistic view. This project will combine a range of methods commonly used by cultural historians of the early-modern period with the approaches taken by medical historians like Cook (1994) who have studied medical practitioners and the dissemination of medical information during this period. Significantly it will also compare such work with research generated by the 'animal turn' (Mennell, 2021) which is entering the discipline. As such it will follow the methodologies of medical and cultural historians working on gender, sex, family life, cheap print, emotions and attitudes to animals like Pollock (1997), McLaren (1984 and 2007), Williams (2015) and Thomas (1983). The student plans to consult the following sources, amongst others: farming pamphlets like The Countryman's instructor (Crawshy, 1636); personal records including Sarah Jinner's almanacs (1559) and Henry Best's Sheep Breeding records (1641) which demonstrate a record of action taken towards managing the fertility of both animals and humans; medical almanacs; informal home 'recipe books' as well as published material such as Sharpe's The Midwife's Book (1671); ego documents like the diaries of Samuel Pepys and Adam Eyre; broadside ballads which evidence the various ways in which fertility was represented in one of the most ubiquitous forms of print; court cases relating to divorce, concentrating on the Court of Arches records at Lambeth Palace Library.