Description
Book SynopsisMonstrous births, rains of blood, apparitions of battles in the sky - people in early modern England found all of these events to carry important religious and political meanings. This book explores the process by which these events became religiously and politically insignificant in the Restoration period.
Trade Review'This is a clearly written and well focussed book which makes an interesting contribution to our understanding of the political, intellectual and religious culture of Restoration and early Georgian England'. Alex Walsham, University of Exeter
Table of ContentsPreface
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Organizing the prodigious: the Poole project and the Mirabilis Annus tracts
2. A kind of philosophy-office: Restoration science and the regulation of prodigies
3. A noise of fictitious prodigies: comets and other prodigies in later Restoration politics
4. A Warning to all to repent: prodigies and moral reform in the 1690s
5. The Poor Comfort of Prodigies and Old Women’s Fables: political prodigies in the Early Eighteenth Century
Conclusion: From reverence to ridicule
Index
