scholarly journals The Counter-Hegemonic Virtues of Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century England

2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-19
Author(s):  
Dragoș Ivana
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Valid Method ◽  
Porous Boundaries

Abstract The purpose of this article is to re-examine popular culture in early-modern England by focusing on the oral/illiterate-written/literate and popular culture-high culture dyads. I aim to question why these interrelated socio-cultural categories have not been properly reconciled by the writers of the time. Moreover, my purpose is to focus on antiquarianism as a valid method whereby the delineation between the above-mentioned dichotomies turns into a subtle relationship in which both terms become complementary. I shall focus on two important antiquarian texts - Henry Bourne’s Antiquitates Vulgares (1725) and John Brand’s Observations on Popular Antiquities (1777) - by considering issues of religion and national identity, in an attempt to show that popular culture made known its counter-hegemonic virtues which, though permanently negotiated, were never rejected by the polite. Ultimately, the unstable relationship between the high and the low will be seen as suggestive of the porous boundaries between the two, indicating, at the same time, popular culture’s participatory role in rethinking cultural identity in Enlightenment England.

Custom, Festival and Protest in Early Modern England: The Little Budworth Wakes, St Peter's Day, 1596

Rural History ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Hindle
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Festive Culture ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The One

The myriad forms of ‘popular culture’ have attracted an increasing amount of attention from historians of early modern and modern England. Students of English social relations are now familiar with several episodes of ‘cultural conflict’ in which there was putative friction between ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ (or ‘patrician’ and ‘plebeian’) notions of acceptable behaviour. As the epigraphs to this article suggest, two particular era of ‘cultural polarisation’ have attracted considerably more attention than any others. On the one hand, historians of the Reformation, and especially of its ‘enforcement’ in late Elizabethan and Jacobean local communities, have identified the suppression of traditional, festive culture as one of the ‘cultural reverberations’ of the spread of protestantism. On the other, Edward Thompson has encouraged students of eighteenth-century England to think in terms of a tension between ‘patrician society’ and ‘plebeian culture’, and of the possibilities that this ‘field of force’ raised for ‘class struggle without class’.

Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 32

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Jewish Music ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Jewish Involvement

With its five thematic sections covering genres from cantorial to classical to klezmer, this pioneering multi-disciplinary volume presents rich coverage of the work of musicians of Jewish origin in the Polish lands. It opens with the musical consequences of developments in Jewish religious practice: the spread of hasidism in the eighteenth century meant that popular melodies replaced traditional cantorial music, while the greater acculturation of Jews in the nineteenth century brought with it synagogue choirs. Jewish involvement in popular culture included performances for the wider public, Yiddish songs and the Yiddish theatre, and contributions of many different sorts in the interwar years. Chapters on the classical music scene cover Jewish musical institutions, organizations, and education; individual composers and musicians; and a consideration of music and Jewish national identity. One section is devoted to the Holocaust as reflected in Jewish music, and the final section deals with the afterlife of Jewish musical creativity in Poland, particularly the resurgence of interest in klezmer music. The chapters do not attempt to define what may well be undefinable—what “Jewish music” is. Rather, they provide an original and much-needed exploration of the activities and creativity of “musicians of the Jewish faith.“

Reviews: The Logic of History: Putting Postmodernism in Perspective, on the Future of History: The Postmodernist Challenge and its Aftermath, Modernism and the Ideology of History: Literature, Politics, and the Past, Postmodernism in History: Fear or Freedom?, Quoting Shakespeare: Form and Culture in Early Modern Drama, Early Modern Civil Discourses, ‘A moving Rhetoricke’: Gender and Silence in Early Modern England, Society and Culture in Early Modern England, the English Radical Imagination: Culture, Religion and Revolution, 1630–1660, An Age of Wonders: Prodigies, Politics and Providence in England, 1657–1727, Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires, and Delectable Goods, Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain, the French Revolution and the London Stage, 1789–1805, Nationalism, Imperialism and Identity in Late Victorian Culture, Modernism, Male Friendship and the First World War, Bloody Good: Chivalry, Sacrifice, and the Great War, Manliness and the Boy's Story Paper in Britain: A Cultural History, 1855–1940McCullaghC. Behan, The Logic of History: Putting Postmodernism in Perspective , Routledge, 2004, pp. viii + 212, £18.99 pbBreisachE., On the Future of History: The Postmodernist Challenge and its Aftermath , University of Chicago Press, 2003, pp. vii + 236, $16.00 pb.WilliamsL. Blakeney, Modernism and the Ideology of History: Literature, Politics, and the Past , Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 265, £40.SouthgateBeverley, Postmodernism in History: Fear or Freedom? Routledge, 2003, pp. xi + 211, £55, £16.99 pb.BrusterDouglas, Quoting Shakespeare: Form and Culture in Early Modern Drama , University of Nebraska Press, 2001, pp. 288, £35.50.RichardsJennifer (ed.), Early Modern Civil Discourses , Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. 206, $65.00.LuckyjChristina, ‘A moving Rhetoricke‘: Gender and Silence in Early Modern England , Manchester University Press, 2002, pp. viii + 198, £40.CressyDavid, Society and Culture in Early Modern England , Variorum Collected Studies Series, Ashgate, 2003, pp. xii + 344, £57.50.McDowellNicholas, The English Radical Imagination: Culture, Religion and Revolution, 1630–1660 , Clarendon Press, 2003, pp. x + 219, £45.BurnsWilliam E., An Age of Wonders: Prodigies, Politics and Providence in England, 1657–1727 , Manchester University Press, 2002, pp. 218, £45.BergMaxine and EgerElizabeth (eds), Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires, and Delectable Goods , Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. xii + 259, 41 plates, £55.SweetRosemary, Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain , Hambledon & London, 2004, pp. xxi + 473, £25.TaylorGeorge, The French Revolution and the London Stage, 1789–1805 , Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. x + 263, £45.AttridgeSteve, Nationalism, Imperialism and Identity in Late Victorian Culture , Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. 229, £45.ColeSarah, Modernism, Male Friendship and the First World War , Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 297, £40FrantzenAllen J., Bloody Good: Chivalry, Sacrifice, and the Great War , University of Chicago Press, 2004, pp. 335, £24.50.BoydKelly, Manliness and the Boy's Story Paper in Britain: A Cultural History, 1855–1940 , Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. x + 273, £60.

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-100
Author(s):  
Christopher Parker ◽  
David Watson ◽  
Alan Armstrong ◽  
Ben Lowe ◽  
Carrie Hintz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The Past ◽  
The First World War

A Changing Spanish Identity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn L. Ness
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
Spanish Novel ◽  
Research Questions

“A Changing Spanish Identity” outlines the research questions and data sets discussed in Setting the Table by introducing the notion of early modern Spanish cultural identity and the changes it encountered in the eighteenth century. It explains the author’s use of Don Quixote as a guide through the study and why this quintessential Spanish novel is appropriate for exploring themes of cultural change and identity. The chapter argues that, despite the major role the Spanish Empire played in early modern history, it has been largely underrepresented in studies of the Atlantic world. The majority of the chapter contains a brief introduction to the three sites addressed in the study as well as the methodology used to investigate these sites. The chapter concludes with an outline of subsequent chapters.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Alan Montgomery
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Grand Tour ◽  
Medieval Chronicles ◽  
George Buchanan

The Introduction summarises the origins of Scotland’s patriotic historiography, highlighting the importance of medieval chronicles and the Renaissance histories of Hector Boece and George Buchanan in laying the foundations of early modern Scottish national identity. In particular, it identifies the long-held belief that Scotland was one of the few places to have successfully resisted Roman conquest. As well as looking at the importance of classical literature and authors such as Cicero and Livy in the development of Scottish scholarship, it also outlines eighteenth-century Scottish attitudes towards ancient Rome, its culture and its imperial ambitions, and explores the importance of the Grand Tour in the formation of early modern interpretations of the classical past.

FROM LAVAPIÉS TO STOCKHOLM: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY VIOLIN FANDANGOS AND THE SHAPING OF MUSICAL ‘SPANISHNESS’

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-199
Author(s):  
ANA LOMBARDÍA
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Chamber Music ◽  
Musical Identity ◽  
Violin Sonata ◽  
Violin Music ◽  
Musical Traditions ◽  
Solo Violin

ABSTRACTSince the mid-eighteenth century the fandango has been regarded as the epitome of Spanish cultural identity. It became increasingly popular in instrumental chamber music, as well-known examples by Domenico Scarlatti, Antonio Soler and Luigi Boccherini show. To date, published musicological scholarship has not considered the role of solo violin music in the dissemination of the fandango or the shaping of a ‘Spanish’ musical identity. Now, eight rediscovered pieces – which can be dated to the period 1730–1775 – show that the violin was frequently used to perform fandangos, including stylized chamber-music versions. In addition to offering evidence of the violin's role in the genre, these pieces reveal the hybridization of the fandango with foreign musical traditions, such as the Italian violin sonata and French courtly dances, demonstrating hitherto overlooked negotiations between elite and popular culture in mid-eighteenth-century Spain. Analysis of these works’ musical features challenges traditional discourses on the ‘Spanishness’ of the fandango and, more broadly, on the opposition between ‘native’ and ‘foreign’ music in eighteenth-century Spain.

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