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Lying in Early Modern English Culture: From the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance

Lying in Early Modern English Culture: From the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance

Author: Andrew Hadfield
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198789468

Published In: September 2017
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only
Paperback Edition ISBN: 9780192844804

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Lying in Early Modern English Culture is a major study of ideas of truth and falsehood in early modern England from the advent of the Reformation to the aftermath of the failed Gunpowder Plot. The period is characterised by panic and chaos when few had any idea how religious, cultural, and social life would develop after the traumatic division of Christendom. While many saw the need for a secular power to define the truth others declared that their allegiances belonged elsewhere. Accordingly there was a constant battle between competing authorities for the right to declare what was the truth and so label opponents as liars. Issues of truth and lying were, therefore, a constant feature of everyday life and determined ideas of individual identity, politics, speech, sex, marriage, and social behaviour, as well as philosophy and religion.

The book is a cultural history of truth and lying from the 1530s to the 1610s, showing how lying needs to be understood in action as well as in theory. Unlike most histories of lying, it concentrates on a series of particular events reading them in terms of academic theories and more popular notions of lying. The book covers a wide range of material such as the trials of Ann Boleyn and Thomas More, the divorce of Frances Howard, and the murder of Anthony James by Annis and George Dell; works of literature such as Othello, The Faerie Queene, A Mirror for Magistrates, and The Unfortunate Traveller; works of popular culture such as the herring pamphlet of 1597; and major writings by Castiglione, Montaigne, Erasmus, Luther, and Tyndale.

Introduction: Being Economical with the Truth in Early Modern England

Part One: Lying and the Culture of Oaths

1: The Oath of Supremacy

2: The Oath of Allegiance

Part Two: Modes of Lying in Early Modern England

3: The Religious Culture of Lying

4: Rhetoric, Commonplacing, Poetics

5: Courtesy, Lying, and Politics

6: Testimony

7: Othello and the Culture of Lies between Conscience and Reputation