Description
'The Damned Fraternitie': Constructing Gypsy Identity in Early Modern England, 1500–1700
Language: EnglishSubject for 'The Damned Fraternitie': Constructing Gypsy Identity in...:
Keywords
Young Man; Gypsy Population; English Gypsies; Gypsy Identity; Rogue Literature; Kirk Yetholm; Gypsies Metamorphos; Cunning Folk; Gypsy Women; Early Modern; Spanish Gypsie; Undeserving Poor; Blacke Bookes Messenger; Wynkyn De Worde; Female Gypsies; Gun Powder; Liber Vagatorum; General Reference Collection; Vagrancy Statute; European Gypsies; Cunning Craft; Philip III; Ragged Rabblement; Vagrant Population; Cock Lorel
Publication date: 08-2022
Support: Print on demand
Publication date: 05-2016
· 15.6x23.4 cm · Hardback
Description
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/li>Biography
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'The Damned Fraternitie': Constructing Gypsy Identity in Early Modern England, 1500?1700 examines the construction of gypsy identity in England between the early sixteenth century and the end of the seventeenth century. Drawing upon previous historiography, a wealth of printed primary sources (including government documents, pamphlets, rogue literature, and plays), and archival material (quarter sessions and assize cases, parish records and constables's accounts), the book argues that the construction of gypsy identity was part of a wider discourse concerning the increasing vagabond population, and was further informed by the religious reformations and political insecurities of the time. The developing narrative of a fraternity of dangerous vagrants resulted in the gypsy population being designated as a special category of rogues and vagabonds by both the state and popular culture. The alleged Egyptian origin of the group and the practice of fortune-telling by palmistry contributed elements of the exotic, which contributed to the concept of the mysterious alien. However, as this book reveals, a close examination of the first gypsies that are known by name shows that they were more likely Scottish and English vagrants, employing the ambiguous and mysterious reputation of the newly emerging category of gypsy. This challenges the theory that sixteenth-century gypsies were migrants from India and/or early predecessors to the later Roma population, as proposed by nineteenth-century gypsiologists. The book argues that the fluid identity of gypsies, whose origins and ethnicity were (and still are) ambiguous, allowed for the group to become a prime candidate for the 'other', thus a useful tool for reinforcing the parameters of orthodox social behaviour.
Introduction: ‘The damned fraternitie’: constructing gypsy identity in early modern England, 1500–1700
1 ‘From Aegypt have I come’
2 ‘Gypsies: thieves and tramps?’
3 ‘Chargeable unto the country’
4 ‘O’er the Moors to Kirk Yetholm’
5 The narrative of gypsyhood
6 ‘By lines they read in face and hand’
7 ‘These rowsey, ragged rabblement of rakehelles’: rogue literature
8 ‘The stain of my offence’
Frances Timbers holds a PhD in British History from the University of Toronto (2008). She has published two books and three articles that deal with issues of magic, witchcraft and gender in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Timbers is currently on a self-imposed sabbatical in Panama, where she spends her time writing about gypsies, teaching yoga, biking to the beach and caring for seven rescued cats.