Neostoicism and the early modern state

Jacob Talmon and Michael Oakeshott represent two opposite tendencies in the anti-totalitarian world view. Both thinkers share many central features of this broad intellectual trend, such as the equation between the Soviet and Nazi regimes, Anglophilia and the rejection of the utopian quest. Yet this basic agreement should not distract us from significant differences in attitude and temperament. Talmon, like most other critics of totalitarianism, was strongly affected by the atmosphere of a profound intellectual and political crisis in Europe, and he regarded the danger of totalitarianism to be an inherent aspect of modernity itself. His liberalism was that of ‘fear’. By contrast, for Oakeshott, who believed in the strength of liberal, and specifically British, civilisation, totalitarianism was merely a child of resentment, a parasitic force with no positive message of its own. He thus displayed a greater measure of confidence in the fortunes of liberal modernity.     

Fairies and the Devil in early modern England

This article considers the fate of fairies in late-Elizabethan and seventeenth-century England. Specifically, it asks whether these “doubtful spirits” were demonised in the period. Drawing on a wide selection of devotional, literary, and demonological texts, the article argues that English Protestants associated fairies with Satan, but this did not necessarily imply that fairies were reclassified as demons. Rather, they were embedded in a complex of beliefs that connected them with falsehood, Catholicism, and the invisible wiles of the Devil. The operation of these beliefs is examined in the context of cases of witchcraft, as well as the representation of fairies in cheap print.     

'Closure' and the urban Great Rebuilding in early modern Norwich

Abstract

Urban buildings have been largely ignored in the debate over the 'Great Rebuilding' of vernacular houses in 16th- and 17th-century England and in Matthew Johnson's influential thesis of 'closure'. This paper reviews the extensive archaeological evidence (from both standing buildings and excavations) for houses in post-medieval Norwich, focusing on the dwellings of the prosperous 'middling sort'. Norwich experienced a significant period of housing development between the late 15th and mid-16th centuries, with rebuilding continuing through the later 16th and 17th centuries. Accordingly, the concept of 'closure' must be adapted to incorporate the distinctive character and chronology of urban buildings.