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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄

@aidannorrie.bsky.social
1.5K followers 551 following 705 posts

Doctor of Elizabeth I as/and Deborah the Judge • Early modern history & lit | children’s lit | women’s writing | monarchy • Managing Editor, @thelondonjournal.bsky.social • Unemployed Lecturer • The Real Empress Palpatine • they/them • 🏳️‍🌈🇳🇿🇦🇺

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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 7h
It seems fitting to end with a special shout-out to the incomparable @lisahopkins.bsky.social, who is responsible for the volume and has enhanced our scholarship (and lives) in so many different ways. The book is now available, so get ordering and reading! ❤️ www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...
degruyterbrill.com
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 7h
...all the more impressive when you remember that she has also published books (both monographs and edited collections) in other areas, including Jane Austen and crime fiction. Thanks again to @matthewsteggle.bsky.social and all our contributors for making the volume happen. 🥰
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 7h
The volume also includes an Appendix of 'Books on Early Modern Subjects by Lisa Hopkins'. I only included books--including monographs, edited plays, and edited collections--published to the end of 2026. The appendix is 3 pages long! This really is an astonishing publishing record, and is made...
Appendix: Books on Early Modern Subjects by Lisa Hopkins
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 7h
...independently and with no criteria as to what to include. It is therefore remarkable just how similar our experiences with Lisa are, which further underscores why we feel this festschrift is such a deserved tribute. I hope you find these deeply personal reflections as moving as I did (and do!).
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 7h
The volume concludes with an Afterword. I wanted to acknowledge the myriad ways Lisa has impacted us, so we asked the contributors to reflect on this impact, whether it be in their careers, through her scholarship, or through a more personal connection. The contributors wrote their reflections...
Afterword: The Scholarship of Lisa Hopkins

Aidan Norrie and Matthew Steggle
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 7h
#LisaFest concludes today. This is perfectly timed, as my copies of the volume have arrived and I'm feeling emotional. The team at @degruyterbrill.bsky.social (and especially Christine Henschel) have done a marvellous job with the volume. I'm especially pleased to see the images printed in colour.
A photo of two copies of The Edges of Early Modern English Drama.

The books are blue, with text in white. The cover image features a host of characters in costume around a baby in a crib.
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 7h
Thread on @earlymodlancs.bsky.social's chapter is up 🙌 bsky.app/profile/aida...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
...century’s critical interest in early modern English drama’s Gothic qualities. It has been an absolute delight to revisit all the chapters in the volume. Tune in tomorrow to hear more about what's in the volume's back matter. 🥰
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
...viewed as Gothic-before-Gothic in its subject matter. For Liz, Cox’s film of a seventeenth-century tragedy exaggerates the Gothic’s concern for porosity in temporal, spatial, and embodied ways. Taken together, then, it is clear that Lisa's _Screening the Gothic_ launched the twenty-first...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
...Gothic, especially in terms of the modern cinematic adaptations of the plays. In addition to expanding on Lisa's discussion of the Gothicisation of _Hamlet_ and _'Tis Pity_, Liz applies the approach to Alex Cox’s 2002 cinematic version of _The Revenger’s Tragedy_, showing how it too can be...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
...off in the mid-2000s. While the term might be first associated with the second edition of Horace Walpole’s _The Castle of Otranto_ (1765), as Liz shows, Shakespeare’s _Hamlet_, Ford’s _’Tis Pity She’s a Whore_, and Middleton’s _The Revenger’s Tragedy_ can fruitfully be analysed as premodern...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
For day 12 of #LisaFest, we have reached the final chapter of the volume. Taking a slightly different approach to the other chapters in this volume, @earlymodlancs.bsky.social aims to place Lisa's _Screening the Gothic_ (2005) at the vanguard of the rise in early modern Gothic studies that took...
Chapter 12

The Gothicisation of Early Modern English Drama: A Retrospective

Liz Oakley-Brown
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Thread on @domlovascio.bsky.social’s chapter is up 🙌 bsky.app/profile/aida...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
...connections and allusions that Domenico has brought to the fore in his chapter. Given my soft spot for Fletcher, it was also very interesting to think about Jonson as an admirer of his rival, as Domenico suggests. Tune in tomorrow for @earlymodlancs.bsky.social's chapter 🙌
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
...interpretation of _Informations to William Drummond of Hawthornden_, alongside a more encompassing definition of "a masque". There is much to learn about the classical world and its reception in the early modern period here, and even with a classics degree I wasn't aware of all the various...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
...between old and new, _The Mad Lover_ shows the present triumphing over the past, while _Lovers Made Men_ exhibits the enduring significance of the classics and, by extension, of the past. Readers will also be delighted to learn about the new insights Domenico's chapter provides on the...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
...response—or indeed riposte—to Fletcher’s play _The Mad Lover_, which was performed at court only seven weeks before Jonson’s masque. At stake is the primacy of the classics, with Jonson seeking to rebuff Fletcher’s more dismissive view of these central myths. As Domenico shows, in the clash...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
...can't say I'm mad. Jonson’s works might not be on the edge of scholarship (unlike many of the other texts discussed in this collection), but his relationships with his contemporaries are less secure. As Domenico’s chapter suggests, Jonson’s 1617 masque _Lovers Made Men_ should be read as a...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Welcome to day 11 of #LisaFest. I can't believe how close we are to the end! Today's chapter is by @domlovascio.bsky.social, and I'm sure it will surprise absolutely no one that Domenico has written on Fletcher, Jonson, and the classical world. Given this is the volume's main Jonson chapter, I...
Chapter 11

Competing Visions of the Classics in Jonson’s Lovers Made Men and Fletcher’s The Mad Lover

Domenico Lovascio
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Thread on @drmirandafay.bsky.social’s chapter is up 🙌 bsky.app/profile/aida...
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Reposted by Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄
Feminegra @feminegra.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Michael Gove’s Ex-Girlfriend Faces Child Abuse Image Charges — So Why Did British Newspapers Delete Their Reports? Dr Lola Salem, a 33-year-old lecturer in French… feminegra.com/michael-goves-ex-girl…
feminegra.com
Michael Gove’s Ex-Girlfriend Faces Child Abuse Image Charges — So Why Did British Newspapers Delete Their Reports?
Dr Lola Salem, a 33-year-old lecturer in French and music at Oxford University’s Oriel College and the former girlfriend of Conservative politician Michael Gove, is facing trial over allegations that she possessed indecent images of children. Salem, who taught French and music at Oriel College, has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Her trial is scheduled for March 2028 at Oxford Crown Court. According to the BBC, the allegations concern three Category B images and one Category C image, allegedly possessed between 2021 and 2023. Category B is the second most serious classification used for indecent images of children.
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
...writers. Perhaps, being nameless, or going by various different names, makes you even more powerful. Miranda's chapter really has given me a new appreciation for _The Witch_, and I'm sure it will do likewise for you all. Tune in tomorrow for @domlovascio.bsky.social's chapter!
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
...moderns, this would have been part of their understanding of witchcraft, as the biblical basis for a witch is simply 'The Witch of Endor'--whose skills in necromancy do not grant her a name. Just as Tolkien and George Lucas took inspiration from this interaction, so too did early modern...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
...she will remain the same, whereas Mother Sawyer is called “witch” and “hag” until she becomes one. Part of this is, as Lisa has observed, that “in English Renaissance drama a witch is usually a witch of somewhere, as in The Witch of Edmonton or The Late Lancashire Witches.” For the early...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
...generally realised. Just as the same person being called a 'refugee' or 'illegal immigrant' can conjure up very different images, so too can the inclusion of witches with names like Hecate, even if they refuse the confines of a name. After all, Hecate says you can call her what you will, and...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
...doing so, it can be reductive and fail to give Middleton his full due. In addition to contextualising Middleton's play alongside the more famous Witch of Edmonton, Miranda pays close attention to the names and naming conventions in the plays, which reveal far more about the texts than is...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
...Shakespeare’s orbit and argues that the slipperiness of names and edges were powerfully exploited in the early modern period. The 'failure' of Middleton's _The Witch_ is nearly always read alongside Middleton's revisions/additions to Macbeth: while there is certainly much to be gained in...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
...sits at the periphery, not the centre. But, as Miranda shows, the inclusion of the figure of Hecate in the play was meant to blur the edges of reality and the mortal realm. In focusing on the power associated with Hecate’s naming, Miranda rescues Middleton’s play and characters from...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Welcome to day 10 of #LisaFest, which features the chapter by the excellent @drmirandafay.bsky.social. The chapter is the volume's primary discussion of Middleton, and Miranda's chapter is a worthy place for this discussion. In the corpus of early modern witch plays, Middleton’s _The Witch_...
Chapter 10

A Witch by Any Other Name? Naming and the Edge of Meaning in Middleton’s The Witch

Miranda Fay Thomas
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Thread on Jessica Dyson’s chapter is up 🙌 bsky.app/profile/aida...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
...to learn from Bess/Elizabeth. Tune in tomorrow for the chapter by the excellent @drmirandafay.bsky.social!
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
...threats take different forms, and that Catholics and Protestants can--and indeed should--work together to defeat the 'Turk'. After all, it is in striking the balance *between* seafaring potency and trading deals that an English Christian identity is protected. James, it seems, is finally able...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
...edges of which the English Protestant self can be framed. Jessica's careful and convincing readings of the plays challenge simplistic interpretations of the themes they depict. Certainly, Catholics and Muslims are both 'threats' to England's Protestantism, but these plays show that the...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
...James VI & I posed a challenge to his more pacifist approach—a challenge that is interrogated in Massinger’s play, which attempts to refigure potent masculinity in firm Christian faith. Both texts play with the idea of the Spanish Catholic and the Islamic Ottoman Other against and through the...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
...shows that their differences tell us a lot about English fears around religion and expansionism. For Jessica, _Fair Maid_ presents and shapes a national identity based on a form of popular and potent English seafaring masculinity compliant with Elizabeth I’s international politics, which under...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
...more love (my chapter is the only other one that includes him), and giving Massinger some deserved attention, Jessica draws attention to the reflexive way drama reflected contemporary fears with a learned subtlety that is a pleasure to read. While the two plays have much in common, Jessica...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
...in Heywood’s _The Fair Maid of the West, Part 1_ and Massinger’s _The Renegado_, the former of which reflects the Elizabethan regime’s expansionism, while the latter grapples with the implications of James VI & I’s (self-)fashioning as the rex pacificus. In addition to giving Heywood some...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
...victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588, piracy and privateering were quasi-legitimate national pastimes in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. Focusing on the construction of masculinities and national identity at the turn of the century, Jessica's chapter contrasts the depiction of piracy...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Welcome back to #LisaFest. Day 9 features the excellent Jessica Dyson, who has wrestled with some pirates and revealed what lies behind their boisterous personas. The Golden Age of Piracy might be associated with the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, but for a nation proud of its...
Chapter 9

Piracy and the Edges of Gender, Nation, and Faith: Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the West, Part 1 and Massinger’s The Renegado

Jessica Dyson
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Came here to ask this!
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Thread on Andrew Hiscock’s chapter is up! 🙌 bsky.app/profile/aida...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Fuck, and I cannot stress this enough, the fuck OFF.
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
that can perhaps be best described as thoroughly Hopkins-y. Have a great weekend, and tune in on Monday when I'll share details about Jessica Dyson's excellent chapter... be warned, there be pirates! 🥰
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Another significant thing about Andrew's chapter is his deep engagement with French scholarship on Hardy, which both contextualises the play extremely well and makes clear Andrew's own contribution to the wider conversation. He also cites and quotes an incredible range of scholars with a generosity
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
One of Andrew's key observations that has stuck with me is how _Coriolan_ and _Coriolanus_ force us to consider the multifarious ways in which reception and inclusion may be enacted in bitterly divided cultures, underlining that it is not certain either that hospitality and peace are synonymous.
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
...between Coriolanus's Rome and Hardy/Henri's France. For Andrew, the figure of Coriolanus offers a telling insight into ongoing cultural debates about hospitality through the ways in which he assumes the (elective) identities of commander and pariah alternately for two different nations.
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
...regime more generally would have seen the encroachment on the royal prerogative (which changing the state's religion clearly is) as allowing "crows to peck the eagles". Given Henri IV's conversion and the various assassination attempts he had faced by c.1607, there are certainly parallels...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
...Lives_ in the period, Shakey seems to have been responding to the "popularity of the theme of elite individualism and resistance" exemplified especially in Chapman's tragedies. To my mind, I've always thought Coriolanus could be considered a Gunpowder play, in the sense that James and the...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
...of each other. In this way, the story of Coriolanus functions as an edge that both Shakey and Hardy cross and/or navigate. It is fascinating that two playwrights turned to the same Roman figure at about the same time: while we should not underestimate the huge appeal of Plutarch's _Parallel...
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Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄 @aidannorrie.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
...each play, of what might be called the “politics of hospitality.” There is clearly an intertextual relationship between the two plays: while Shakey's is probably a year or two later than Hardy's, I love imagining the possibility that a traveller might have seen both plays with 18 months...
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