Early Modern European Mass Culture -- Social and Historical Translation Series

Author: (English) Burke (Burke, P.) Author, Yang Yu et al. Translated
Publisher:
Publishing 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, the elite enjoyed both elite culture and shared mass culture: "If you were a noble, you might have a servant from the countryside. She would sing folk songs to lull you to sleep. Therefore, mass culture is everyone's culture, an open culture to all. The elite 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 part of the people." This book presents a rich and diverse landscape of mass culture in Europe as a whole to the readers, covering a spatial range from Galway in Ireland in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east, from Norway in the north to Sicily in the southwest; and a temporal span of three centuries. Readers will see the world of itinerant performers: minstrels, clowns, magicians, lake healers, traveling actors, and story singers; as well as the ballads, 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 unarticulate groups (craftsmen, farmers, shepherds, miners, sailors, servants, beggars, 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, and they began to withdraw from it. Elite culture, which was suppressed, was later taken up by elite intellectuals and scholars as a theme of "rediscovery."