Early Modern European Mass Culture

Author: Burke (English)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-11-01
Features: People often separate elite culture from mass culture, but Peter Burke, one of the pioneers of "new cultural history," found the connection between them. In this book, Burke describes the English and mass culture in Europe from 1500 to 1800, as well as the formation of the later opposition. In a sense, elites enjoyed both elite culture and mass culture while sharing the latter: "If you were a noble, you might have a servant from the countryside who would sing folk songs to lull you to sleep. Thus, mass culture is everyone's culture, an open culture to all. Elites also had another culture, mainly open to adult men of the upper class. Although there were two cultures, it wasn't one side being mass culture and the other elite culture, but one side being the culture of everyone and the other the culture of a select few." This book presents a rich and diverse landscape of mass culture in Europe as a whole, covering a geographical range from Galway in Ireland in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east, and from Norway in the north to Sicily in the southwest. It spans three centuries. Readers will encounter the world of itinerant performers: bards, jesters, magicians, lake doctors, traveling actors, and story singers; as well as the songs, stories, dramas, and festive rituals that the common people enjoyed. From the heroes, villains, and fools in mass culture, readers can see the attitudes and values of the unarticulated masses (artisans, farmers, shepherds, miners, sailors, servants, beggars, and thieves, along with their wives and children) and how these attitudes and values were shaped by the social conditions of the time. When the upper class finally discovered the subversive and dangerous nature of mass culture to their social order, their attitude toward mass culture underwent a fundamental shift, leading them to withdraw from it and embrace elite culture, which was later "rediscovered" by elite scholars and writers after being suppressed.