1st Edition

The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Culture in Early Modern England

Edited By Andrew Hadfield, Matthew Dimmock, Abigail Shinn Copyright 2014

    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.

    Introduction: Thinking About Popular Culture In Early Modern England; I: Key Issues; 1: Recovering Speech Acts; 2: Youth Culture; 3: Festivals; 4: Popular Reading and Writing; 5: Visual Culture; 6: Myth and Legend; 7: Religious Belief; II: Everyday Life; 8: Courtship, Sex and Marriage; 9: Food and Drink; 10: Work; 11: Gendered Labour; 12: Crime; 13: Popular Xenophobia; 14: Games; 15: Cultures of Mending; III: The Experience of the World; 16: Politics; 17: Riot and Rebellion; 18: Time; 19: Property; 20: Popular Medicine; 21: Superstition and Witchcraft; 22: Military Culture; 23: London and Urban Popular Culture

    Biography

    Andrew Hadfield is Professor of English and co-Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Sussex, UK.

    Matthew Dimmock is Professor in English and co-Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Sussex, UK.

    Abigail Shinn is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Leeds, UK.

    ’This broad-ranging and ambitious volume provides us with an extraordinary window onto the vibrant world of everyday experience in early modern England. The essays collected here offer a vivid introduction to the laughter and shouting, dancing and singing, gossip and gambling, eating and drinking that alleviated the harsh realities of work, life and death, and to the imaginative work of discovery and interpretation that has so distinguished this field in the last two generations.’ Andrew Pettegree, University of St Andrews, UK

    ’This is the perfect companion for students and scholars interested in the popular culture of early modern England. It is brilliantly imagined and usefully organized, and has brought together work by some of the most influential scholars in the field, as well as by some of the brightest young researchers redefining it as it moves forward.’ David Scott Kastan, Yale University, USA

    ’The book boasts an impressive list of contributors, and is written to be easily understood by both and expert audiences. It can be read through in its entirety as a textbook ... Ample footnotes and bibliographies for additional reading are provided. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above.’ Choice