Books by Merridee Bailey
The question and procedures of integrating children into wider society during the medieval and ea... more The question and procedures of integrating children into wider society during the medieval and early modern period are debated across a wide range of contemporary texts, in both print and manuscript form. This study takes as its focus the ways in which vernacular literature (including English courtesy poems, incunabula and sixteenth-century printed household books, grammar school statutes, and pedagogic books) provided a guide to socialising children. The author examines how the transmission and reception of this literature, showing how patterns of thought changed during the period for parents, teachers, and young people alike; and places children and family reading networks into the context of debates on the history of childhood, and the history of the book.
Journal Special Issue by Merridee Bailey
Edited Collections by Merridee Bailey
This book re-evaluates and extends understandings about how work was conceived and what it could ... more This book re-evaluates and extends understandings about how work was conceived and what it could entail for women in the premodern period in Europe from c. 1100 to c. 1800. It does this by building on the impressive growth in literature on women's working experiences, and by adopting new interpretive approaches that expand received assumptions about what constituted 'work' for women. While attention to the diversity of women's contributions to the economy has done much to make the breadth of women's experiences of labour visible, this volume takes a more expansive conceptual approach to the notion of work and considers the social and cultural dimensions in which activities were construed and valued as work. This interdisciplinary collection thus advances concepts of work that encompass cultural activities in addition to more traditional economic understandings of work as employment or labour for production. The chapters reconceptualise and explore work for women by asking how the working lives of historical women were enacted and represented, and analyse the relationships that shaped women's experiences of work across the European premodern period. Merridee L. Bailey is a social and cultural historian of late medieval and early modern England. She is an Associate Member of the Faculty of History, University of Oxford.
Routledge titles are available as eBook editions in a range of digital formats
This volume spans the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, across Europe and its empires, and brin... more This volume spans the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, across Europe and its empires, and brings together historians, art historians, literary scholars and anthropologists to rethink medieval and early modern ritual. The study of rituals, when it is alert to the emotions which are woven into and through ritual activities, presents an opportunity to explore profoundly important questions about people’s relationships with others, their relationships with the divine, with power dynamics and importantly, with their concept of their own identity. Each chapter in this volume showcases the different approaches, theories and methodologies that can be used to explore emotions in historical rituals, but they all share the goal of answering the question of how emotions act within ritual to inform balances of power in its many and varied forms.
Articles by Merridee Bailey
A Previously Unnoticed Copy of the Articles of the Worshipful Company of Broderers, 1528
Notes and Queries , 2021
Administrative activities for the City of London are recorded in a fifty-volume series known as t... more Administrative activities for the City of London are recorded in a fifty-volume series known as the Letter Books, now held at the London Metropolitan Archives, and partially calendared by Reginald R. Sharpe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The Letter Books record administrative activities between the aldermen and what became the Court of Common Council, from the reign of Edward I and up to and including most of the reign of James II. On occasion, London company statutes (also known as ordinances) were recorded in the Letter Books as part of the city’s long-running struggle for civic oversight of company business. In this way, an otherwise unknown copy of the 1528 articles of the Worshipful Company of Broderers was entered in its entirety in Letter Book O (1526-1532). Correspondence with the Clerk of the Broderers reveals the Company had no knowledge of the 1528 articles in this or any other surviving document.
Philological Quarterly, 2019
Words keep company with other words in dictionaries. But which words have been chosen to explain ... more Words keep company with other words in dictionaries. But which words have been chosen to explain the Middle English ‘meek’? Why were these words used and what change and continuities can we see over time? This article investigates definitions for ‘meek’, and words derived from it, from the earliest mid-fifteenth-century English–¬Latin and Latin–English vocabularies, as well as later bilingual and multilingual dictionaries. Because modern western society primarily views meekness in a straightforwardly negative way as a trait that demonstrates weakness and submission, a study of these dictionaries helps to unpick meekness’s historically more complex meanings.
Law and History Review , 2019
The turn to emotions-centred history has generated new interest in exploring the presence of emot... more The turn to emotions-centred history has generated new interest in exploring the presence of emotions in legal sources. However, as legal sources were precisely crafted to meet legal requirements and jurisdictional issues, this is particularly challenging. Nevertheless, legal claims were informed by social norms, and this could include emotion. This article investigates the invocation of emotions like fear, anger, dread and sorrow in petitions made to the court of chancery. While the language of chancery petitions was informed by technical legal requirements, petitioners and counsel collaborated to make statements about emotions, often as a technique of persuasiveness to elicit sympathy. The recitation of emotion helped petitioners and counsel to account for actions and moral faults, as well as to censure someone’s character. This article explores the legitimacy of certain emotional language tropes in cases brought into chancery between 1480 and 1540.
English Studies, 2018
This article explores the importance of economic and social equilibrium in Thomas Dekker’s prose ... more This article explores the importance of economic and social equilibrium in Thomas Dekker’s prose allegory, A Worke For Armourers (1609). I investigate the intersection between economics and literature during a period of profound economic growth and social upheaval when the seeds for capitalism were laid. I discuss how Dekker’s allegory grapples with the possibility for radical change but confronts an equally strong desire for balance and stability. Early modern dramatic writers rarely used single terms to convey concepts like change, balance and equilibrium. Instead, Dekker used allegorical situations, complex allusions and metaphors to explore how economic and social change could be achieved. A reading of Dekker’s text shows that he created an allegorical world turned economically and socially upside down before providing a resolution that returns the world to its previous state of equilibrium.
Keywords: Thomas Dekker, early modern, English literature, London, war, emotions
The intellectual and spiritual ambition of the Catholic Church can be seen in the popular work of... more The intellectual and spiritual ambition of the Catholic Church can be seen in the popular work of late medieval Catholic lay piety, A werke for housholders, written by the Bridgettine Richard Whitford. Through the medium of print, lay English audiences were exposed to intellectual and spiritual innovations in how to cultivate interior acts of devotion. For the householders addressed, aspirations towards developing interior and personal acts of devotion sat beside messages about household governance, emotional management and gender roles. By refocusing attention on the household aspirations of late medieval and early modern lay households this article adds to what is known about late medieval Catholic vitality. Whitford’s text also provides a puzzling piece of evidence about the evolving nature of late medieval Catholic devotion and the reformed spirituality of the early Reformation. This article concludes by posing questions about the complexity of the pre-and post-Reformation religious vision and about loyalty to individual religious figures in the early modern period.
Two Court of Chancery documents, both at the National Archives, recount the commercial transactio... more Two Court of Chancery documents, both at the National Archives, recount the commercial transactions of the London printer Richard Pynson during the final years of his life and add to our knowledge of Pynson’s business affairs and finances. This article looks to supplement the important work of S. H. Johnston, who was the first to bring to light these two Chan- cery cases referring to Pynson’s later years. Johnston suggests that these two documents hint at Pynson’s senility and the increasingly important role of Pynson’s daughter and her successive husbands. This article expands upon this analysis by exploring how the mix of family and business ties involving apprenticeships can be integrated into the study of old age and economic practices.
Social status would have been a hidden factor in the use of hornbooks by children. Formal educati... more Social status would have been a hidden factor in the use of hornbooks by children. Formal educationalists focused on male children from the gentry, merchant, and yeoman classes as having the most value to the future well- being of the Commonwealth, with grammar schools set up to cater to male children of these classes. The behavior and manners of girls, the lower classes, and the peasantry seemed less important for pedagogues to actively concern themselves with. Yet, girls were also taught rudimentary skills in reading the English vernacular in petty or dame schools, as well as by parish priests. Equally, young girls from well-established families, such as the Campions, were associated with hornbooks. Items like hornbooks had a place within domestic households and also within elementary schools and would have rep- resented the educational processes of young girls better than any formal gram- mar book or published educational text.
Until recently, literary texts produced either in manuscript or printed form between c. 1400 and ... more Until recently, literary texts produced either in manuscript or printed form between c. 1400 and 1600 were assumed to neglect the interests of children and young people. A selection of didactic texts from this period, however, discusses children and attitudes to the time of 'childhood', with these motifs relevant to both elite secular or ecclesiastical households. The interests of children and young people are addressed within these didactic examples, which in turn reveal developments occurring in the creation of non-elite, nuclear family audiences primarily in the late fifteenth century.
Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2011
Book chapters by Merridee Bailey
Approaching Women and Work in Pre-modern Europe
Working for Women: Experiences, Relationships and Cultural Representation in Pre-Modern Europe (Routledge, 2018), ed. Merridee L. Bailey, Tania M. Colwell, Julie Hotchin: 1-29., 2018
It is with a view to understanding and assessing the complexity of
women’s working lives that Wom... more It is with a view to understanding and assessing the complexity of
women’s working lives that Women and Work in Premodern Europe,
c. 1100 – 1800 explores the interrelated perspectives of women’s experiences of work; their working relationships with other women, men, and God; and the cultural representation of women’s participation across various spheres of endeavour. This requires the integration of cultural, intellectual, and economic activities into the repertoire of what work means, and did mean, to women and men in the past. The temporal and geographic scope through which women and work are examined spans roughly 1100– 1800 and covers a large expanse of western Europe, including Germany, France and the Netherlands, and England. Throughout the volume, premodern is used as an inclusive term that refers to the period ranging from the medieval through to the latter phase of the early modern era.This volume has two aims: to demonstrate how a more encompassing concept of work extends to a variety of women’s (and of course, men’s) occupations beyond the purely economic, and to examine women’s enterprising strategies to negotiate the parameters shaping their intellectual, cultural, emotional, and economic labours.
Emotion, Ritual and Power: From Family to Nation
Emotion, Ritual and Power in Europe, 1200 - 1920: Family, State and Church, ed. Merridee L. Bailey and Katie Barclay, pp. 1-20, 2017
The relationship between ritual and the creation, maintenance and
destabilisation of power has no... more The relationship between ritual and the creation, maintenance and
destabilisation of power has not gone unexplored by historians, art historians and anthropologists, given the centrality of ritual to religious practice and to institutional structures both across time and throughout the world. Yet the place emotion holds in the relationship between ritual and power—indeed, that emotion should be one of the analytical tools historians turn to in order to understand power dynamics—has received less systematic attention. It is only recently that the emotions, rather than the ritual, have moved to the centre of the academic debate. This shift in focus has in part been motivated by Renato Rosaldo’s observation that some rituals are formed to manage emotions (such as grief) as much as rituals are designed to create emotion in the participants. It has also been influenced by a swathe of new methodologies and theoretical approaches emerging from across the humanities and social sciences that have rejuvenated investigations into what emotions are and how they work in organising, mediating and constructing social, cultural and institutional
relationships.
“thus of War, a Paradox I write”: Thomas Dekker and a Londoner’s View of War and Peace
Writing War in Britain and France, 1370-1854: A History of Emotions, edited by Stephanie Downes, Andrew Lynch and Katrina O’Loughlin, pp. 89-105, 2019
War was a fashionable topic for the English presses in the early modern period. Reports on wars i... more War was a fashionable topic for the English presses in the early modern period. Reports on wars in Ireland, France and in the Netherlands made popular reading for English men and women, attested to in the growing proliferation of news pamphlets.. The appetite for news about war on the Continent was unsurprising given the close geographical and commercial ties between the English and the Dutch, as well as the ramifications conflict between Spain and the Dutch Republic had on English commercial and dynastic interests. With some speed, Thomas Dekker, who made a living writing professionally for London’s theatres and the printing presses, turned the threat of war and the close commercial and political interests between England and the Continent into scenes in his plays and pamphlets. Performed on stage and read by London audiences, Dekker’s writings became part of a culture of war writing in the early modern period.
In this chapter I examine how late-fifteenth century books published by William Caxton were part ... more In this chapter I examine how late-fifteenth century books published by William Caxton were part of a broader dialogue about social order and moral anxieties. Literature at this time reflected English political events and cultural changes particularly associated with England's loss of its French territories, the civil conflict created by the Wars of the Roses, and ongoing anxieties with royal stability. While escalating military and political intrigue were felt most strongly within inner royal and aristocratic circles, other social groups, particularly England's middling ranks of merchants and gentry responded in their own ways to anxieties and disorder in political rule. While this was often expressed at the level of concerns with the legitimacy of political governance and a supposed national moral decay, in many instances these anxieties were also translated into concerns with the good and proper upbringing of the next generation. It is possible to infer emotional states through the political and social fears felt inside mercantile and gentry communities and which were manifested as a heightened concern for moral standards. While we recognise that adult texts were reflecting English political events to an interested gentry and urban merchant audience, the circulation of related anxieties relevant to upbringing and childhood also flourished. This chapter integrates these two topics by exploring the late-fifteenth century instructional literature which contributed to debates about political and social order by promoting virtue and ethical conduct for gentry and merchants, and also inside family groups and for young people. Several mid-fifteenth century political manuscripts are first analysed to establish the level of interest in political events amongst a gentry and mercantile readership before Caxton's texts are introduced. His texts, many of which identify concerns with England's security and a sense of changing English identity, can be fruitfully studied for their contribution to the vogue for moral debate.
Is there a formula for courtesy? If we think of a formula as a conventional way of expressing som... more Is there a formula for courtesy? If we think of a formula as a conventional way of expressing something orally or in writing, or, in this instance as a set of behaviours that are deemed at any one time to be appropriate and fitting, then yes, we can clearly say there is a formula for courtesy. It is a convention that we greet people, that men and increasingly often, women, shake hands, and that we maintain eye contact when we are speaking. In the medieval period in England there was a similar belief in the importance of rules governing conduct. However, did this extend into a formulaic literature? Formulaic writings are identified through the use of words ‘regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea.’ As I, and others have commented, a formula can also be taken as a conventional statement of some fundamental principle. Do the courtesy poems written in the English vernacular during the late-fourteenth century through to the fifteenth century, meet such criteria that would class them as a ‘medieval formula’?
In this chapter I propose that we can see a formulaic quality in English vernacular courtesy literature, including set phrases and word groupings that are used, and certain syntactic patterns. My analysis of six English vernacular courtesy poems will fall into three parts. I will initially identify formulaic linguistic patterns, the repeated use of key words and phrases, and linguistic tags. This will be followed by an analysis of particular courtesy rules that are associated with this literature, to see if there was a literary ‘set’ of recognisable manners for readers to identify with. The last of the formulaic elements that I consider is the use of instantly recognisable ‘characters’ who perform the task of guiding readers towards certain conclusions. There is then the possibility for making some tentative suggestions for why, in particular, these formulaic patterns appeared in this literature.
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Books by Merridee Bailey
Journal Special Issue by Merridee Bailey
Edited Collections by Merridee Bailey
Routledge titles are available as eBook editions in a range of digital formats
Articles by Merridee Bailey
Keywords: Thomas Dekker, early modern, English literature, London, war, emotions
Book chapters by Merridee Bailey
women’s working lives that Women and Work in Premodern Europe,
c. 1100 – 1800 explores the interrelated perspectives of women’s experiences of work; their working relationships with other women, men, and God; and the cultural representation of women’s participation across various spheres of endeavour. This requires the integration of cultural, intellectual, and economic activities into the repertoire of what work means, and did mean, to women and men in the past. The temporal and geographic scope through which women and work are examined spans roughly 1100– 1800 and covers a large expanse of western Europe, including Germany, France and the Netherlands, and England. Throughout the volume, premodern is used as an inclusive term that refers to the period ranging from the medieval through to the latter phase of the early modern era.This volume has two aims: to demonstrate how a more encompassing concept of work extends to a variety of women’s (and of course, men’s) occupations beyond the purely economic, and to examine women’s enterprising strategies to negotiate the parameters shaping their intellectual, cultural, emotional, and economic labours.
destabilisation of power has not gone unexplored by historians, art historians and anthropologists, given the centrality of ritual to religious practice and to institutional structures both across time and throughout the world. Yet the place emotion holds in the relationship between ritual and power—indeed, that emotion should be one of the analytical tools historians turn to in order to understand power dynamics—has received less systematic attention. It is only recently that the emotions, rather than the ritual, have moved to the centre of the academic debate. This shift in focus has in part been motivated by Renato Rosaldo’s observation that some rituals are formed to manage emotions (such as grief) as much as rituals are designed to create emotion in the participants. It has also been influenced by a swathe of new methodologies and theoretical approaches emerging from across the humanities and social sciences that have rejuvenated investigations into what emotions are and how they work in organising, mediating and constructing social, cultural and institutional
relationships.
In this chapter I propose that we can see a formulaic quality in English vernacular courtesy literature, including set phrases and word groupings that are used, and certain syntactic patterns. My analysis of six English vernacular courtesy poems will fall into three parts. I will initially identify formulaic linguistic patterns, the repeated use of key words and phrases, and linguistic tags. This will be followed by an analysis of particular courtesy rules that are associated with this literature, to see if there was a literary ‘set’ of recognisable manners for readers to identify with. The last of the formulaic elements that I consider is the use of instantly recognisable ‘characters’ who perform the task of guiding readers towards certain conclusions. There is then the possibility for making some tentative suggestions for why, in particular, these formulaic patterns appeared in this literature.