The Cultural Geography of St. Paul's Precinct: 1580-1625

FAIN: FT-55917-08

Roze Hentschell
Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO 80521-2807)

I seek funding to research and write two chapters of a manuscript on St. Paul's Cathedral in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, exploring the textual representations of this church and its surroundings. While there is no question that St. Paul's was one of London's most important loci of commercial and social intercourse in the early modern period, there has been no major study of the cathedral in the context of its surrounding, nor has any scholar yet attempted to present a monograph thoroughly devoted to exploring the precinct, accounting for all of its various components and trying to understand how it both shaped and was shaped by the urban subject.

Associated Products

"The Cultural Geography of St. Paul's Precinct" (Book Section)
Title: "The Cultural Geography of St. Paul's Precinct"
Author: Roze Hentschell
Editor: Malcolm Smuts
Abstract: This chapter is a cultural study of St Paul’s Cathedral precinct in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It discusses the physical properties of Paul’s, including the nave, Paul’s Cross pulpit, the bookshops in the churchyard, and the many and varied uses and occupations of the precinct and church, including sermons, secular business practices, and criminal activity. While recent scholarship has attended to various discreet spaces in and around the cathedral, this chapter discusses the religious and secular space and activities as mutually constitutive rather than distinct. Influenced by studies of cultural geography, the chapter investigates the role of the cathedral precinct in constructing the identity of the early modern Londoner through a discussion of the effects that geographical space has on human behaviour.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199660841.013.36
Access Model: Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Book Title: The Oxford handbook of the age of Shakespeare
ISBN: 978-0-19-96608

“Paul’s Work: The Campaign for the Renovation of St. Paul’s Cathedral, 1561-1620” (Book Section)
Title: “Paul’s Work: The Campaign for the Renovation of St. Paul’s Cathedral, 1561-1620”
Author: Roze Hentschell
Editor: Torrance Kirby and P.G. (Paul) Stanwood
Abstract: In the late 16th century, the phrase 'to make Paul's work' of something became colloquial for a botched or an always unfinished project. The phrase has its origins in the sustained yet unsuccessful efforts to repair and renovate London's St.Paul's Cathedral after the 1561 fire that destroyed the spire and damaged the roof. The church fell into disrepair in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and was the subject of several reconstruction attempts, none of which came to fruition. It was not until Charles I took the throne that a complete restoration of the church, led by Inigo Jones, was planned. This chapter is an attempt to weave together the sometimes competing narratives surrounding the renovation efforts in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. The author uses those royal qualifiers deliberately, as the monarchs were generally involved in attempts at refurbishing.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004262812_022
Access Model: Print
Publisher: Brill
Book Title: Paul's Cross and the Culture of Persuasion in England, 1520-1640
ISBN: 9789004262812

“Moralizing Apparel in Early Modern London: Sermons, Satire, and Sartorial Display.” (Article)
Title: “Moralizing Apparel in Early Modern London: Sermons, Satire, and Sartorial Display.”
Author: Roze Hentschell
Abstract: This study investigates the cultural and textual relationship between two types of texts that inveigh against the preoccupation with fashionable attire: imaginative secular writing and sermons. While scholars have noted the influence sermons had on secular texts in the period, this article shows how popular literature of the profane, in denouncing excessive pride in apparel, had a profound and lasting influence on homiletic discourse. Sermons are hybrid texts that incorporate both the themes and literary flourish of texts written by secular, polemical authors, such as Philip Stubbes and Thomas Nashe. Special attention is given to the sermons preached at Paul's Cross to show how the complex social space surrounding the pulpit was crucial in enabling preachers to express the critique against excesses in apparel.
Year: 2009
Primary URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/10829636-2009-005
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies
Publisher: Duke University Press

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