Cultures of Shame Exploring Crime and Morality in Britain 1600-1900

by Nash, David; Kilday, Anne-Marie

• ISBN13: 9780230525702
• ISBN10: 0230525709
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-12-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

The first systematic study of the concept of shame from 1600-1900, showing good and bad behaviour, morality and perceptions of crime in British society at large. Single episodes in the history of shame are contextualized by discussing the historiography and theory of shame and their implications for the history of crime and social relations.

Author Biography

David Nash is Professor of History at Oxford Brookes University. He has Published widely on the history of secularism in Britain. Most recently he has published internationally renowned works on the history of blashphemy in Britain and the Christian world and other works on the relationship between crime, law and culture. Anne-Marie Kilday is Principle Lecturer in History at Oxford Brookes University, UK. She has written on the history of women's criminality (such as infanticide) and violent crime since the seventeenth century in Scotland as well as in wider comparative contexts. She has published numerous articles, contributed to a number of edited collections, and hosted several recent conferences on crime and related subjects.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
The History and Theory of Shame - Then and Now
Private Passions and Public Penance: Popular Shaming Rituals in Pre-Modern Britain
The Shame and Fame of Half-Hangit Maggie: Attitudes to the Child Murderer in Early Modern Scotland
'To Make Men of their Honesty Afraid': Shaming the Ideological Dissident 1650-1834
Conservatives, Humanitarians and Reformers Debate Shame
The Everyday Life of a Wexford Parson: The Rev. William Hughes' Taste for Drink, Blasphemy, Indecent Exposure, Criminal Damage, Bestial Voyeurism and Field Sports
'The Woman in the Iron mask': From Low Life Picaresque to Bourgeois Tragedy - Matrimonial Violence and the Audiences for Shame
'Writing Cuckold on the Forehead of a Dozen Husbands': Mid-Victorian Monarchy and the Construction of Bourgeois Shame
Conclusion: Reconciling Shame with Modernity
Bibliography