Keynote Speaker: Prof Christopher Marsh (Belfast)
University of Birmingham
Wednesday 25 June 2025
“Recreation” had a variety of potential meanings in early modern England – to refresh or enliven oneself through comfort or rest, to entertain, or to create again. Roger Ascham astutely advised that “Ernest studie must be recreated with honest pastime”[1] while translator Philemon Holland took from Pliny that “Wine recreateth and refresheth the stomack”[2]; physician William Bullein’s balm of choice was music: “Vpon my lute some time, to recreate my selfe, I ioyne with my simple [h]armonie, manie playne verses”.[3] Early modern English people of all sorts knew that the variety provided by pastimes, entertainments, and community had the power to literally re-create a person, offering renewal for both body and spirit. While there is substantial scholarly work on the recreational pastimes of the country’s nobility, Popular Recreations in Early Modern England will focus primarily, though not exclusively, upon recreations that were enjoyed across social strata.
Hosted at the University of Birmingham by the Centre for Reformation and Early Modern Studies, this study day explores what English people did for fun or personal restoration in the 16th and long 17th centuries. It considers a wide range of recreational materials and activities such as ballads, sport, devotional literature or practices, psalms/psalm singing, prints, emblems, dancing, ephemera, poetry, walking, commonplace books, bearbaiting, horse riding, decoration, readerships, game playing, eating/drinking, hunting, storytelling/folk belief, gardens, theatregoing activity and more!
Though the study day is open to all, postgraduate researchers are particularly encouraged to submit papers.
Suggested topics for 20-minute papers:
· Ideas surrounding “popular” culture in this period and the reception of popular cultural history
· Recreation and re-creation of the self
· Community and social activity
· Reading and other activities for instruction and enjoyment
· Early modern popular culture and public engagement
· Historiography of pastime and leisure in early modern England
· Everyday objects and the museum
· Recreation as a practice
· Embodiment and refreshment
· Places of recreation
Deadline for abstracts is 3 April 2025.
Please email a paper title and abstract of c. 200 words, along with a very short bio, to:
Katie Bank k.n.bank@bham.ac.uk & Peter Auger p.auger@bham.ac.uk
[1] R. Ascham, Toxophilus i. f. 13v
[2] P. Holland, translation of Pliny, Historie of World vol. II. 152
[3] W. Bullein, Government Healthe f. viiiv
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