Popular Culture In Early Modern Europe

The concept of cultural history has in the last few decades come to the fore of historical research into early modern Europe. Due in no small part to the pioneering work of Peter Burke, the tools of the cultural historian are now routinely brought to bear on every aspect of history, and have transformed our understanding of the past. First published in 1978, this study examines the broad sweep of pre-industrial Europe's popular culture. From the world of the professional entertainer to the songs, stories, rituals and plays of ordinary people, it shows how the attitudes and values of the otherwise inarticulate shaped - and were shaped by - the shifting social, religious and political conditions of European society between 1500 and 1800. This third edition of Peter Burke's groundbreaking study has been published to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the book's publication in 1978. It provides a new introduction reflecting the growth of cultural history, and its increasing influence on 'mainstream' history, as well as an extensive supplementary bibliography which further adds to the information about new research in the area.

This book, first published in 1987, looks at the culture of the masses and at the political language and actions of the crowd. It examines the enduring traits of a European demotic culture that was largely non-literate, and it then goes on to show how the political outlook of the lower classes arose from the moral attitudes contained in their culture, a culture that was deeply suffused by Christianity. Unlike upper-class culture, popular culture is resistant to change and has to be studied over a long period – in this case the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Because its themes – popular social values, riot and revolt – are pervasive over both time and space, the book’s geographical coverage is extensive, taking in most of western and central Europe.

1978 witnessed the publication of Peter Burke's groundbreaking study Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. Now in its third edition this remarkable book has for thirty years set the benchmark for cultural historians with its wide ranging and imaginative exploration of early modern European popular culture. In order to celebrate this achievement, and to explore the ways in which perceptions of popular culture have changed in the intervening years a group of leading scholars are brought together in this new volume to examine Burke's thesis in relation to England. Adopting an appropriately interdisciplinary approach, the collection offers an unprecedented survey of the field of popular culture in early modern England as it currently stands, bringing together scholars at the forefront of developments in an expanding area. Taking as its starting point Burke's argument that popular culture was everyone's culture, distinguishing it from high culture, which only a restricted social group could access, it explores an intriguing variety of sources to discover whether this was in fact the case in early modern England. It further explores the meaning and significance of the term 'popular culture' when applied to the early modern period: how did people distinguish between high and low culture - could they in fact do so? Concluded by an Afterword by Peter Burke, the volume provides a vivid sense of the range and significance of early modern popular culture and the difficulties involved in defining and studying it.

Understanding Popular Culture

The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Culture in Early Modern England is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary examination of current research on popular culture in the early modern era. For the first time a detailed yet wide-ranging consideration of the breadth and scope of early modern popular culture in England is collected in one volume, highlighting the interplay of 'low' and 'high' modes of cultural production (while also questioning the validity of such terminology). The authors examine how popular culture impacted upon people's everyday lives during the period, helping to define how individuals and groups experienced the world. Issues as disparate as popular reading cultures, games, food and drink, time, textiles, religious belief and superstition, and the function of festivals and rituals are discussed. This research companion will be an essential resource for scholars and students of early modern history and culture.

In the pre-industrial societies of early modern Europe, religion was a vessel of fundamental importance in making sense of personal and collective social, cultural and spiritual exercises. This text presents Kaspar von Greyerz's important overview and interpretation of the religions and cultures of Early Modern Europe.

The 14 essays in this volume look at both the theory and practice of monarchical governments from the Thirty Years War up until the time of the French Revolution. Contributors aim to unravel the constructs of ‘absolutism’ and ‘monarchism’, examining how the power and authority of monarchs was defined through contemporary politics and philosophy.