Pasties, Pies and Play in the Seventeenth-Century Kitchen

by Charlotte Potter September means the return of everyone’s favourite comfort food programme, The Great British Bake Off! Watching the new batch of bakers getting creative in the tent, I started to wonder what a seventeenth-century Great British Bake Off might look like. A recipe book from 1692 belonging to Hannah Bisaker, which is held in the Wellcome …

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Persian Petitioning and Serendipitous Research

As an eternal glutton for punishment, I was researching in the Archive Reading Room in the Houses of Parliament in January earlier this year. In the list of Petitions to the House of Lords in my period of research, there was one particular Petition which stood out from the others. Amidst the multitudes of petty …

Spring 2019 Seminar Series

Wednesday 6 February: Katherine Ibbett (Oxford), ‘Surface Writing: On the Seventeenth Century Saint Lawrence River’. 5pm, Silverstone 309 Wednesday 13 February: Emma Whipday (Newcastle), ‘“You see my sister’s yet at my dispose”: Brothers and Sisters on the Early Modern Stage’. 5pm, Silverstone 309 Monday 25 February: Work in progress: Flora Dennis, Nicole Mennell, Joanne Paul. …

The Fool and the Law in Early Modern England

Readers of early modern literature are well acquainted with the fool type, a stock character that is frequently to be found in the drama of the period and is generally renowned for his merrymaking and, in some cases, wise witticism. And yet, because he was a ‘fool’ there must have been some points of contact …

New Partnership with University College Dublin

Here at CEMMS we have just set up what promises to be an exciting and fruitful new partnership with University College Dublin (UCD). The Sussex-UCD partnership is funded by The International Research Partnerships and Network Fund at Sussex, and the School of English at UCD. It is for three years in the first instance but may …

Zibellini as Animal-Made-Objects

This blog post was written by Sussex PhD student Nicole Mennell. Nicole's works explores the connections made between figures of sovereignty and animals in early modern drama. She has interned with the National Portrait Gallery where she conducted research for a future exhibition on pets. Nicole is also the co-founding editor of Brief Encounters, an open-access …

A visiting scholar’s perspective

After spending a year as a visiting scholar at CEMMS, Yinghua Zhao (Lecturer at the School of Foreign Studies, Minzu University of China) shares her experiences of Sussex. I spent one year at the School of English as a visiting scholar studying Early Modern literature. Upon my arrival I felt the welcoming and vibrant atmosphere of …

“Prosthesis in Medieval and Early Modern Culture” – a special issue of Textual Practice

Following the recent publication of a special issue of Textual Practice, “Prosthesis in Medieval and Early Modern Culture” , Katie Walter (co-editor of the special issue with Chloe Porter and Margaret Healy) talks us through the origins of the special issue and the conference that inspired it, and gives us a brief introduction into the fascinating …

“Plum pottage was mere popery”: the ups and downs of Christmas in the 17th century

Image from The Vindication of Christmas (Printed for G. Horton, London: 1652) Despite the persistent belief that Christmas was effectively invented by the Victorians and barely bothered with by anyone before the 19th century, a bit of a delve into the literature of the 17th century yields much in the way of interesting Christmas-related curiosities. Performance has a …

The Life and Adventures of Meredith Hanmer, Anglican Divine

This blog post was written by Dr Angela Andreani, Marie Curie Intra-European Research Fellow in English at Sussex University. As her two year project investigating the "life and adventures" of Meredith Hanmer comes to a close, she shares some of the highlights of her research with us... St Mary's church, Youghal, where Hanmer was warden 1600-1602 The …