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- Title
The Queer Death of the Hanged Dog: The 1677 Execution of Mary Higgs' Mongrel.
- Authors
Lodine-Chaffey, Jennifer
- Abstract
Over the last forty years, scholars have interpreted the early modern public execution ritual variously as an affirmation of state power, a chance for victims to fashion a memorable identity on the scaffold, and a site of festivity for those gathered to witness. What, though, do we make of the public execution of a dog? This article considers the 1677 hanging of a dog and its female owner for the crime of bestiality, focusing on early modern English beliefs about animals, human sexuality, and punishment. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, reasons for killing animals involved in bestiality found their basis in interpretations of biblical texts, anxieties about animal familiars, fears of crossbreeding, and a desire to maintain boundaries between beasts and humans. This dog's execution, which occurred publicly and was memorialized in print, complicates the usual understandings of public execution, effectively queering the ritual by destabilizing its meaning.
- Subjects
HIGGS, Mary; MONGREL (Book); STATE power; EXECUTIONS &; executioners; HUMAN sexuality; DOMESTIC animals
- Publication
Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, 2023, Vol 49, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
0315-7997
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3167/hrrh.2023.490101