Honor and Reputation Among the Early Modern English Elite, 1530-1630.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

A concern with honor was ubiquitous among the elite in early modem England. Yet for all its prevalence as a social and cultural value, honor is an intangible concept, and this makes the task of examining how it functioned in daily social life difficult. "Honor" defies tidy categorization. It was something by which elite men and women judged themselves and by which they were judged within their communities. For all the difficulties inherent in the task of analyzing the manner in which people understood honor in the period, and the ways in which it was deployed within daily life, honor remains an important aspect of the early modem mental landscape in need of historical analysis. This dissertation offers a reassessment of this import social value among the elite in early modem England between the years 1530 and 1630 and focuses on a close reading of multi-generational family paper collections (including those of the Kitson, Thynne, Cavendish-Talbot, and More families) in order to sketch out a fuller picture of how the concept of honor was employed in daily life. Using an approach that is sensitive to the dynamics of self-presentation, it addresses the dynamics of honor and social credit as issues of symbolic interaction and approaches honor in the period as a social value.
The opening chapter of this work considers the historiography of honor in early modern England with particular attention paid to problematizing the historiographical convention of a transition in honor in the period from a violent and militaristic code to one of Renaissance civility rooted in the ideals of humanism. It argues that an analysis is needed which focuses not on prescriptive sources and the records of litigation (which have been heavily utilized by past historians working on concepts of honor) but on archival sources that reveal something of lived social realities (such as personal correspondence, the records of estate management, and diaries). A discussion of the relevance of social theory, in particular the insights of Erving Goffman, to such a project is also asserted and an examination of various vocabularies and definitions of honor deployed in the period is also provided.
Following this introductory chapter, this work offers a re-evaluation of the links between honor and violence among elite men and demonstrates that, in contrast to earlier analyses which privileged the role of violent assertion in elite masculine articulations of honor, physical conflict was decried in the period. Most gentlemen saw their honor as tied to their roles as householders and as figures of authority in the local community and endeavored to avoid being drawn into violent conflicts as such activities could compromise their honorable reputations. The honor of elite women is also investigated in a subsequent chapter in which it is argued that, in contrast to other interpretations, sexual reputation constituted only one of many attributes of female honor. This project thus deconstructs the tradition understanding of honor as operating within a gender binary with an emphasis on male assertiveness and female defensiveness.
Having deconstructed the idea of male honor as rooted in the willingness to use violence to defend one's name and female honor as based solely on sexual reputation, this work then moves to a consideration of alternate sources of honor for the elite in early modern England and focuses on activities such as the extension and reception of hospitality, the holding of local office, the maintenance of family unity, and a host of involvements associated with the household. The picture which emerges of honor through the analysis offered here is of a complex and ambiguous social value that played a prominent role in both structuring social relationships and constructing personal identity.