Cantitate/Preț
Produs

Punishing the dead?: Suicide, Lordship, and Community in Britain, 1500-1830

Autor R. A. Houston
en Limba Engleză Hardback – 5 aug 2010
What can we learn from suicide, that most personal and often inscrutable of acts? This strikingly original work shows how, from treatment of suicides in historic Britain, unique insights can be gained into the development of both social and political relationships and cultural attitudes in a period of profound change. Drawing ideas from a range of disciplines including law, philosophy, the social sciences, and literary studies as well as history, the book comprehensively analyses how successful and attempted suicide was viewed by the living and how they dealt with its aftermath, using a wide variety of legal, fiscal, and literary sources. By investigating the distinctive institutional environments and mental worlds of early modern England and Scotland, it explains why suicide was treated as a crime subject to financial and corporal punishments, and it questions modern assumptions about the apparent 'enlightenment' of attitudes in the eighteenth century.The book is divided into two parts. Part one examines the role of lordship in managing social and economic relationships following suicide and illuminates the importance of distinctive punishments inflicted on suicides' bodies for understanding historic communities. The second part of the book places suicide in its cultural context, analysing the attitudes of early modern people to those who killed themselves. It explores religious beliefs and the place of the devil as well as secular and medical understandings of suicide's causes in sources that include provincial newspapers.Informed by continental as well as British research, Punishing the Dead? explicitly compares England and Scotland, making this a completely British history. It also offers intriguing evidence for the importance of cultural regions and local vernaculars that transcend national boundaries.
Citește tot Restrânge

Preț: 111276 lei

Preț vechi: 169145 lei
-34% Nou

Puncte Express: 1669

Preț estimativ în valută:
21296 22121$ 17689£

Carte tipărită la comandă

Livrare economică 24-30 ianuarie 25

Preluare comenzi: 021 569.72.76

Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780199586424
ISBN-10: 019958642X
Pagini: 416
Dimensiuni: 162 x 241 x 33 mm
Greutate: 0.78 kg
Editura: OUP OXFORD
Colecția OUP Oxford
Locul publicării:Oxford, United Kingdom

Recenzii

Original and compelling...an important and powerful work of comparative history...a stimulating and productive read
This is an impressive book, rich in detailed analysis and nuance ... work of uncommon scholarship that should become required reading for scholars in the history of early modern medicine.
a rewarding read, offering a wide-ranging and well-researched challenge to the existing historiography of suicide.

Notă biografică

Robert Allan Houston was born in Hamilton, Scotland, lived in India and Ghana and was educated at the Edinburgh Academy and St Andrews University before spending six years at Cambridge University as a research student (Peterhouse) and research fellow (Clare College). He has worked at the University of St Andrews since 1983 and is Professor of Modern History, specializing in British social history. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Academia Europaea. He is married to a university manager and lives in Edinburgh.