British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
BA PDF Symposium 200626 April 2006 AbstractsDr Sharon HowardGentlemen behaving badly in seventeenth-century BritainToday, ‘gentleman’ retains some class connotations, but it’s defined largely by behaviour. A real gentleman is a thoroughly civilised man: courteous (even chivalrous) and well mannered, he has an honourable sense of ‘fair play’, discreet good taste and avoids public displays of emotion. However, in the early modern period ‘gentleman’ was still a title defined by status, pedigree and wealth: seventeenth-century gentlemen frequently behaved shockingly by modern standards, and their sense of honour and the place of anger in public life was rather different too. I’m currently exploring several aspects of gentlemen’s misbehaviour in their political and personal lives, bearing in mind that the two spheres were in any case not easily separated. In this talk, I focus primarily on interpersonal violence and its uses. This is likely to consider up to three main themes. The first is violence amongst gentlemen themselves, including duelling, used as a means to defend and uphold personal honour. The second is violence as ‘discipline’, against social inferiors and subordinates. The third area is the use of violence as a complement to conflicts pursued through the law. In some respects, gentlemen used violence in much the same way as men of all social ranks did in the early modern period; however, there were some distinctive themes to elite men’s violence, and moreover, significant changes over the course of the seventeenth century. Dr Howard gained a BA in History at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, followed by a MA in women’s and gender history at the University of York. She then returned to Aberystwyth to research her PhD on ‘Crime, communities and authority in early modern Wales: Denbighshire 1660-1730’, completed in 2003. She is currently completing a book derived from that research for publication by the University of Wales Press in 2006/7, and has also published articles based on the PhD research. She took up a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 2003; her current research focuses on violence and disorder in seventeenth-century north Wales and Cheshire, which is expected to lead to a number of publications.
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