Popular Culture Flashcards
To what extent did Europeans share a common culture in the Early modern Period?
Historian Peter Burke’s notion of a binary division between ‘popular’ and ‘elite’ cultures has been challenged by many scholars who see a variety of ever changing popular and elite cultures.
Arguably, at the start of the 16th century many Europeans, rich and poor alike, did share some cultural practices of the church, involvement in festivals and carnivals, belief in the public humiliation of social outcasts and law-breakers, and belief in the power of magic and witches.
However it would be too generalised to say their was ‘popular’ culture as people led different lives according to class, geographical location, different mentalities, gender and religion.
Were the festivals of misrule and carnival useful safety valves?
These festivals allowed everyone to break away from the constraints of gender, class and social expectations.
By allowing this freedom, people could express their resentment and rebellion in an ordered fashion to dissuade them from doing it in everyday life.
However civil authorities, nervous of carnival’s power to disrupt and subvert, did not take it for granted that the world would return safely to normal afterwards.
Why was there action on moral regeneration in the sixteenth century?
Most towns were violent places where the murder rate was much higher than in most presentday cities.
Popular rebellions, riots and civil wars were a problem in most countries.
There was a growing number of vagrants and vagabonds.
There was also a growing concern on what was perceived to be ungodly behaviour: gambling, prostitution, sodemy and drunkenness.
Why did popular cultures face challenges in the early modern period?
In the early modern period, traditional popular culture was challenged by secular and religious authorities who wished to establish a more orderly and godly society.
The challenges are often regarded as resulting from the impact of printing, religious developments – especially the Reformation and Counter Reformation – and political, economic and social change.
Peter Burke argued that the main threat came from the elites, who were determined to control society and popular culture for religious, socio-economic and political reasons.
Was there a print revolution?
for :
Printing reduced the cost of copying texts.
This enabled more people (not just the elite) to purchase books and pamphlets thus greatly assisting the diffusion and dissemination of knowledge.
Pamphlets played a vital role in the spreading of Protestant messages and therefore the reformation.
The printing press helped to undermine the established political order in the 17th c.
More people became literate and could read to those that weren’t.
Reading became an essential skill for many jobs and the affordability of books had a big effect on education.
Against:
Literacy rates improved slowly.
Probably only a third of Europeans were literate by 1700.
Means of transport increased which impacted the spreading of printing.
Scribal production was not replaced by printing, it flourished until the late 17th century.
Oral culture was not undermined.
Print could and was used to distort and subvert the truth.
Printing did not necessarily undermine the role of traditional authority.
The Index Librorum Prohibitorium listed titles forbidden to be read by Catholics.
How did religious change affect popular culture?
Protestant and Catholic reformers had very different aims.
P reformers were generally determined to eradicate what they saw as evils.
C reformers tended to favour reform and modification.
P’s saw saints as successors to pagan gods.
They sought to abolish the huge number of festivals, feasts and processions associated with Catholic saints.
Pope Paul III set up the Council of Trent tried to prevent festivals being boisterous and drunken.
How did political, economic and social change effect popular culture?
Political change – Rebellions and civil wars became commonplace in Europe, especially in the period from 1550-1650.
In England and France there was a veritable flood of political pamphlets in the 1640s.
In the 17th c political texts and images were a part of everyday life.
Economic and social change – Between 1500-1800 Europe’s population grew from about 80m to 190m.
In 1500 only Naples, Venice and Paris had populations of more than 100,000.
In 1800 there were 23 with this populations.
There was a great expansion of trade and more ships were built, more canals dug and roads were improved.
In Britain there was a commercialisation of leisure.
Businessmen began to regard leisure activities as a good investment.
To what extent did the elite withdraw from traditional cultures in the early modern period?
By the 18th century European elites – the clergy, nobility, bourgeoisie and the scholarly – had largely abandoned traditional popular cultures to the lower classes, whom the elites increasingly saw as rowdy, unsophisticated and superstitious.
This is the view that Burke holds, arguably the elites had always shunned many aspects of traditional culture.
The Clergy – In 1500, the majority of the parish clergy were men of a similar social and cultural level to their parishioners.
P and C reformers demanded a learned and more virtuous clergy.
The new priests were better educated and of higher social status.
The nobility – Influenced by various Renaissance texts, nobles adopted more polished manners.
They stopped eating in great halls with retainers, wrestling with peasants and killing bulls in public.
They learned to speak and write ‘correctly’.
The Bourgeoisie – The polished manners of the nobility were imitated by officials, lawyers and merchants.
The learned elite – Adopting ideas from the scientific revolution, the scholarly elite abandoned the superstitions and beliefs in magic.
By the late 17th c they largely stopped believing in witchcraft.
