Drafting Chapter Five #DevilDiss: The Devil in 16th and 17th century Polemics and Pamphlets

As I wrote about the other day,  I'm past the halfway point on #DevilDiss. The foundational survey chapters are finished, and now it's time to turn towards the chapters that talk about use and function.
Chapter four: the absence of devils in Shakespeare is in conference paper form from ACMRS and I got great feedback from that.
Chapter six I turned in as part of my course with my dissertation direction and she'll be sending that along with notes, and I just have to tie in Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes to it.

So I'm feeling really good about that. The one chapter I've done NO work on is chapter five, the use of the devil in 16th and 17th century polemics and pamphlets. And with all good things, the inspiration came from TV. Salem specifically. I was watching the first episode last summer, and saw this on the screen:

It got me thinking about how by the 16th and 17th century, the figure of the devil, what he looks like and what he does, had become common knowledge enough to be used to make arguments.
So I decided to write a chapter that would bridge the absence of devils in Shakespeare with my culminating chapter on Milton. Both time and genre wise it's a great bridge.

I have a preliminary bibliography that I'll start with next week, but this as with all my work, this chapter will be grounded in close readings. In this case, close readings of the covers. This chapter has several delineating factors. Because my dissertation is on the English folkloric devil, I am only examining pamphlets from England. I'm only interested in polemic/political pamphlets as I'm analyzing and exploring how the use of the devil is used in argument, so I'm not paying attention to covers for sermons or plays. Also, while there is some overlap with ballads, I'm not considering those because again, the focus is on argument. However, the Houghton Library has just digitized ballads from the 17th century, and they're GORGEOUS!

I've set the time from 1500-1660 because much earlier the material print culture didn't allow for wide circulation and readership necessary for broadsheets and I end  where I do because I'm using Milton's publication of Paradise Lost in 1660 as my culmination of the devil's presentation as afterwards Milton's characterization is what gets forwarded.

So, I spent the morning on EEBO searching for devil records from 1500-1660. There were 370 hits from 296 records. Thirty pages worth. I only looked at and downloaded covers. Most covers are text, some include devil related art. The ones with text still prominently feature devil in the title and/or description.

• So far as priority, I'll examine images/cover art then text covers.
• I will then organize within these according to the subtopics I noticed when scanning: 
• round heads
• Pope
• religion in general
• witches
• Quakers specifically
• Parliament
• Ranters
• Last Will and Testament
• Robert the Devil
• Cromwell
• battle defeats.
• Within these subtopics I will then organize by date

Now I've saved all these image files. Next I'm printing them out so I can organize them because I need the paper to manipulate. Once I have them organized (and I've burned through all my paper and ink) I'm going to take them to  the campus copy center (which is my favorite place in the world) and have them bind it so it's easily accessible.

Now there are some potential traps.
While 370 is a hefty number, there's no way I have ALL the devil references in pamphlets in England. So I have to use Jolly's methodology (and the one I use in my Anglo-Saxon chapter) that I'm examining this subset, and gesturing towards larger trends and issues, BUT that doesn't mean that we can make big blanket statements.
Also, while I spent the morning looking at everything the EEBO had, there are several images (like below) that I've found on the Internet with no identifiers, or only partial identifiers.

None of these appeared in my EEBO search, making me nervous about what else is not there.

While some of the pamphlets I'm examining do involve witchcraft, I'm not focusing on this, so the above woodcut may not make the cut, especially as this is a woodcut without context (title, publisher, date). If I could find the larger context, maybe.

 

For similar reasons, this Matthew Hopkins one may or may not be included, as well as for the fact that there is no direct image of the devil.

This one will make the cut because it has a direct image of the devil, and is more in context.

 

This one interests me because of the connection between the English folkloric devil tradition and the wild man tradition which also includes Robin Goodfellow.

This last one in particular interests me as it's a pamphlet against usury, and that revisits previous sections of the dissertation that examine the connection between Jews and the devil.

So if anyone has more information on the above images, I'd appreciate you letting me know.
So I'm going to get started with printing out and organizing and hopefully not killing my printer.

For those interested, here's my starting bibliography:

Andersen, Jennifer Lotte, and Elizabeth Sauer. Books and Readers in Early Modern England Material Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Open WorldCat. Web. 24 May 2015.

---. Books and Readers in Early Modern England Material Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Open WorldCat. Web. 24 May 2015.

Bayman, Anna. Thomas Dekker and the Culture of Pamphleteering in Early Modern London. N.p., 2014. Open WorldCat. Web. 24 May 2015.

CHINED (Conference), and Andreas H Jucker. Early Modern English News Discourse Newspapers, Pamphlets and Scientific News Discourse. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co., 2009. Open WorldCat. Web. 24 May 2015.

---. Early Modern English News Discourse Newspapers, Pamphlets and Scientific News Discourse. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co., 2009. Open WorldCat. Web. 24 May 2015.

---. Early Modern English News Discourse Newspapers, Pamphlets and Scientific News Discourse. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co., 2009. Open WorldCat. Web. 24 May 2015.

Clark, Sandra. The Elizabethan Pamphleteers: Popular Moralistic Pamphlets, 1580-1640. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1983. Print.

Dionne, Craig, and Steve Mentz. Rogues and Early Modern English Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Open WorldCat. Web. 24 May 2015.

Dolan, Frances E. Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England, 1550-1700. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. Print.

Gilman, Ernest B. Plague Writing in Early Modern England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Open WorldCat. Web. 24 May 2015.

Halasz, Alexandra. The Marketplace of Print Pamphlets and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England. New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Open WorldCat. Web. 24 May 2015.

Hibbard, G. R et al. Three Elizabethan Pamphlets. London: Harrap, 1951. Print.

Kinney, Arthur F. Rogues, Vagabonds, & Sturdy Beggars a New Gallery of Tudor and Early Stuart Rogue Literature Exposing the Lives, Times, and Cozening Tricks of the Elizabethan Underworld. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990. Open WorldCat. Web. 24 May 2015.

Marshburn, Joseph H, and Alan R Velie. Blood and Knavery; a Collection of English Renaissance Pamphlets and Ballads of Crime and Sin. Rutherford [N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1973. Print.

“Matthew Hopkins Witchfinder General.” N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May 2015.

McRae, Andrew. Literature, Satire, and the Early Stuart State. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print.

Nevitt, Marcus. Women and the Pamphlet Culture of Revolutionary England, 1640-1660. Aldershot, Hants, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. Print.

“Pendle Witches | Planet Open Knowledge Foundation.” N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May 2015.

Politicus, Mercurius. “England | Mercurius Politicus.” N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May 2015.

Raymond, Joad. Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Print.

---. Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Print.

Starner, Janet Wright, and Barbara Howard Traister. Anonymity in Early Modern England “What’s in a Name?.” Farnham, Surrey; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. Open WorldCat. Web. 24 May 2015.

“The Devil Is in the Pamphlets: Witchcraft and Emotion in Seventeenth-Century England | ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.” N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May 2015.

“The Pamphlet War between John Taylor and Henry Walker.” Mercurius Politicus. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May 2015.

Voss, Paul J. Elizabethan News Pamphlets: Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe & the Birth of Journalism. Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press, 2001. Print.