MO3015 The Mental World of the Individual and the Collective in England, 1550-1800
   
Lecturer Professor R A Houston (St Katharine's Lodge, Room 0.06)
   
Credits 30
   
Availability 2009-2010 - semester 2
   
Class Hour view timetable
   
Description Men, women and children in pre-industrial England lived in a very different world from their twenty-first century counterparts. Life was insecure, painful and short; understanding of man and nature was rudimentary; belief systems were very different. The material and intellectual environment produced distinctive and fascinating attitudes. By examining the way people thought and acted about (for example) death, being young or old, magic, and crime; about themselves and about those around them - we can recreate the changing mental world of the English as individuals and as a society.

   
Basic Reading C. W. Brooks, Law, politics and society in early modern England (2008)
W. Coster, Family and kinship in England, 1450-1800 (2001)
R. Horrox and W. M. Ormrod (eds), A social history of England, 1200-1500 (2006)
B. Reay (ed.), Popular culture in seventeenth-century England (1988)
K Wrightson, English Society, 1580-1680 (1982)
   

Course Structure

    1. Introduction and Setting of Essays
    2. Family
    3. Masculine and Feminine
    4. The Body in Illness and Health
    5. Mental Health
    6. Death
    7. Young and Old
    8. Systems of Belief: Religion, Magic and Astrology
    9. Crime and Punishment
    10. Community
    11. Individualism

   
Assessment 60% examination - 3-hour paper
40% coursework
   

Learning Outcomes
  • Emphasis on an empathetic rather than a judgmental understanding of the people of the past
  • Awareness of approaches from other disciplines
  • Development of teacher-assisted student self learning
   
Restrictions None