POPULAR CULTURE IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND: SOME METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Abstract

Vying with each other in terms of conceptual frameworks and methodologies, recent studies on popular culture in early modern England have sought to shed light on people's values, customs, beliefs and behaviour by recourse to what the Annales School has termed "anecdotal history". Viewed from this angle, popular culture no longer appears to be the cultural pariah that was either ostracised or ridiculed as barbarian and primitive by the elite. The present article elaborates on the interaction between the two opposite categories and presents a few methodological approaches that have had the merit of digging up valuable information about ordinary people and their lived experience in early modern England.

Headnote

Abstract: Vying with each other in terms of conceptual frameworks and methodologies, recent studies on popular culture in early modern England have sought to shed light on people's values, customs, beliefs and behaviour by recourse to what the Annales School has termed "anecdotal history". Viewed from this angle, popular culture no longer appears to be the cultural pariah that was either ostracised or ridiculed as barbarian and primitive by the elite. The present article elaborates on the interaction between the two opposite categories and presents a few methodological approaches that have had the merit of digging up valuable information about ordinary people and their lived experience in early modern England.

Keywords: early modern England, elite culture, history, methodology, popular culture

1. Introduction

Talking about popular culture in early modern England may be a puzzling undertaking at first sight. Terminological confusions, on the one hand, and the lack of a common denominator between the multifarious conceptual frameworks employed by scholars in the field, on the other, are the major setbacks. Currently considered a fully-fledged discipline founded as a spin-off of cultural studies, popular culture is thought to have emerged during the Industrial Revolution or to have been the consequence of industrialization and a capitalist market economy, two essential socio-economic processes which enabled the Frankfurt School to interpret culture as a mass-production object or, more specifically, as "industry" (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002: 94-136). From this perspective, popular culture has been theorised as a synonym for commodified culture due to revolutionary technologies that have upheld cultural consumption. Notwithstanding these views, popular culture is a concept meant to cause terminological ambiguity, especially when the historical component is at stake. For instance, Tony Bennett (1980: 18) argues that "the concept of popular culture is virtually useless, a melting pot of confused and contradictory meanings capable of misdirecting inquiry up any number of theoretical blind alleys". Bennett's cogent argument can be coupled with Holt N. Parker's (2011: 169) idea that "nearly all common definitions are inapplicable to any but recent times" (Parker, since the misunderstanding of "popular culture" stems from the wide circulation of post-modern theories that aim to undermine high-brow culture and to turn history into an almost non-existent ingredient. Furthermore, Parker (2011: 152) labels popular culture as a marginal category, a "residual area" utterly opposed to elite culture as long as "'popular' and 'high' represent two nonintersecting sets".

This article examines high culture/the elite in tandem with popular culture/the vulgus in early modern England by capitalising on the historical component often ignored by cultural studies. In what follows, I will endeavour to show that history - more precisely what the Annales School has called "anecdotal history", translated as the study of ordinary people and their social experience - connects the "popular" to various meanings of "culture", understood not only as artefacts, but also as customs, beliefs, attitudes and types of behaviour accepted or dismissed by the polite. Acutely aware of regional variations, localised social practices and protocols performed by both men and women, a historical approach to popular culture in the context of early modern England has the potential to reconstruct a culturally diverse past evidenced by historical/archival accounts that stand as living proof of the interaction between two social categories that became separated in the mid-nineteenth century.

2."High" vs. /and "low"?

A swathe of definitions of popular culture creates a divide between "high" and "low". However, recent scholars and, most notably, historians have pleaded for an interaction between the culture of the elite and that of the unlearned by focusing on a wide array of social, cultural, religious, political and economic factors typical of specific group in space and time. They have revised Peter Burke's binary model examined in his thought-opening study, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, published in 1978, viewing popular culture as a dynamic process that is subject to negotiation and refashioning when discussed in relation to the culture of the toffs. Taken as "the starting point for historical analysis" (Reay 1998: 198), Burke's model has been refuted because "high" and "low" are treated as socio-cultural polarities. Distinguishing between the "great" and the "little" traditions, Burke contends that

This asymmetry came about because the two traditions were transmitted in different ways. The great tradition was transmitted formally at grammar schools and at universities. It was a closed tradition in the sense that people who had not attended these institutions, which were not open to all, were excluded. In a quite literal sense, they did not speak the language. The little tradition, on the other hand, was transmitted informally. It was open to all, like the church, the tavern and the market-place, where so many of the performances occurred. (Burke 2009: 55)

In spite of this "asymmetry", Burke (2009: 55) draws attention to the fact that low culture was shared by the aristocracy, who also "participated in the little tradition as a second culture". The historian expounds on the causes that have led to the separation of the two cultural categories by the early nineteenth century, among which the most relevant are the moral and religious reform of the uncouth, the rise of literacy, early modern capitalism and politeness and the aftermath of the Scientific Revolution. Though Burke fails to perceive "high" and "low" as fully interdependent, his excellent analysis promotes popular culture as a wide-ranging, rather than residual, field: "Speaking of the 'little tradition' in the singular suggests that it was relatively homogeneous, which was far from being the case in early modern Europe" (Burke 2009: 56).

This line of argument has turned out to be a fertile ground for further research that looks at popular culture as context-bound, i.e. deeply anchored in the socioeconomic and cultural realities of the early modern period. By following in the footsteps of the Annales School representative Roger Chartier, whose cultural historical analysis encompasses regional, rural v. urban, religious, gender or agebased divisions, current critics and historians of popular culture have urged for an analytical model that reveals different uses of beliefs, objects and attitudes the uncivilised borrowed from the elite. For a historian like Barry Reay (1998: 201), this manner of assimilating high-brow culture elements goes hand in hand "with a recognition of culture as process" (emphasis in the original). Martin Ingram (1995: 95) has rightfully observed that Burke's theory does not shed light on "the infinite gradations of the social hierarchy", nor can it be appropriately employed to capture regional variety or gender roles. Bob Bushaway (2002: 344) has questioned the notion of class, arguing that seventeenth-century British society differs from the eighteenth-century one in which "general labels such as 'the labouring poor' or 'the lowest orders' are usually employed". Bushaway (2002: 345) explores eighteenthcentury popular culture via E.M. Thompson's coinage of "the patrician-plebeian dichotomy" that "accords with the views of eighteenth-century contemporaries such as Fielding and Goldsmith". In an attempt to reconcile the "mob", a term initially recorded in English around 1600 and used in the first decades of the eighteenth century, with the polite, the study of popular culture has concentrated on the way in which the vulgus was responsive to the elite's social conventions, regulations, education, laws, etc., as well as on the manner in which the latter "participated in the little tradition", as Burke (2009: 55) suggests.

Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain is John Brand's wellknown antiquarian work that unravels collective social practices, of which some were enjoyed by patricians themselves. "Connived at by the state" (Brand 1849: xi), the preservation of plebeian ceremonies, rituals, oral lore, superstitions, prophecies, popular religion and popular literature are the hallmark of "customary consciousness" (Bushaway 2002: 350). Cases of shared cultures did exist before the late eighteenth century. Reay explains how astrology and medicine were used by both high and low culture, yet for different purposes. The former included the systematic astrology of natural philosophers, which "reinforced providential ways of viewing the universe" (Reay 1998: 214) and popular (pseudoscientific) astrology, which dealt with the way in which the stars influenced people's life. The latter was practiced by physicians who "were amazingly eclectic in their approaches, drawing on the panoply of folk as well as classical remedies [...] The poor did visit surgeons and physicians".

Works on popular culture in early modern England have lately brought into discussion the question of gender deemed as a standard of virtue. Susan Dwyer Amussen provides useful information on the instability of gender as a socially constructed category. Inextricably linked to marriage, sexuality and household management, gender was concerned with the traditional status of women, whose task was to defend their chastity, to obey their husbands and to have sex only within marriage. Amussen's original approach deconstructs such a stereotypical approach by detailing on women's inferiority to men as a consequence of their limited access to education, property, law and professional instruction. Concurrently, her study has the merit of revising Burke's thesis, according to which "there is too little to say about women, for lack of evidence" (Burke 2009: 81). After elaborating on women's use of violence, particularly women beating their husbands who suffered public shaming, such as charivaris or skimmington rides, Amussen (1995: 67) concludes by saying that eighteenth-century popular activities and practices were also premised on political and cultural improvements "from the nature of the state to medical conceptions of women's bodies". This case study is expressive of how everyday behaviour, beliefs and attitudes have played a significant role in understanding gender in tandem with the political and cultural background of the early eighteenth century.

3.Methodological issues

When it comes to methodology, it is virtually impossible to deal with popular culture by having recourse to a single or specific critical perspective. Contemporary scholars have addressed the question whether there are authentic sources meant to enable us to delve into the "little" tradition, particularly because research on popular culture has been the exclusive preserve of the high class. This is why our perception of popular culture has been the result of what has been written by polite authors, who saw the uncouth "from above", who ridiculed, satirised or portrayed them in a distorted manner. As Tim Harris (1995: 6) has cogently noted, plebeian work, practices, recreations and leisure must not be mistaken with "what the elite perceived and feared". By the same token, John Mullen and Christopher Reid (2000: 15) insist that the excerpts they have selected are written by refined authors, whose literary productions and discourse depict the rabble "with approval, condescension, or hostility". Nevertheless, Mullan and Reid reinforce Harris's idea that there must be a mutual relationship between "high" and "low" and that both categories should be studied as a whole. Since current scholarship regards the practitioners of popular culture as actors, it is natural to claim that they were deeply engaged in the construction of their own identity and cultural consciousness. Bob Bushaway provides a telling example which runs counter to the perception of popular culture as cultural pariah:

To view eighteenth-century popular culture as merely a surrender to animal passions is to take the stance of many contemporary critics, such as the radical reformer Francis Place, who emphasized those aspects whilst minimizing the richness and diversity of a culture which might connect the visionary world of William Blake and the literary aspirations of John Clare, as well as the complexity of alternative knowledge based upon the observation of the natural world or the opportunities for self-preservation and the ability to overcome the setbacks of fate which Place's own father demonstrated. (Bushaway 2002: 345)

The printed oral literature recorded by John Brand and Henry Bourne, two of the most famous antiquarians of the eighteenth century, is another methodological tool that proves to be problematic when we attempt to determine the originality of folk-tales, folksongs, ballads, proverbs, holidays, etc. gathered by twentieth-century collectors. In this respect, Tim Harris (1995: 8) suggests that many of them "owned their origins to musical hacks or even professional composers who published for a living".

Ecclesiastical and secular court records are serviceable instruments that may allow critics and historians to grasp the culture of the commoners in terms of appropriate methodology. According to Harris,

Rather than struggling to overcome the limitations of the sources, which might not, in the end, be particularly productive, a better approach could be to play to the sources' strengths. That is, since the sources tell us about the interaction of elite and popular culture, maybe we should make the nature of that interaction the focus of our study, rather than the attempt to isolate what was purely popular, which could end up being a futile endeavour. (Harris 1995: 10)

The advent of the culture of politeness makes Harris's model complete. Standardised in the early decades of the eighteenth century, politeness began to be exercised with the help of conduct manuals which inculcated the virtues of civility and literacy into servants, the labouring poor and shopkeepers so as to perfect their communicative and trading skills. Also, politeness was a dual process, promoted through refined social skills displayed by both the aristocracy and the middle class and through the bargaining and advertising goods of the lower sort. The rise of early modern capitalism, which was conducive to the commercialization of society, were crucial means of disseminating literacy, recreational activities, printed books, newspapers, provincial theatre and sports to plebeians. In this context, politeness acted as a socio-cultural element that helped low culture resist hegemony "without adopting the unruly ethos of less respectable forms of radicalism" (Mullan and Reid 2000: 15).

4.Conclusion

This article has made the case that the "high"-"low" binary opposition theorised by Peter Burke has spawned a large number of studies which treat popular culture as a historically and culturally dynamic process. By seeking to reconstruct a more accurate image of popular culture, seen in its performative dimension and entwined with, rather than excluded by, the culture of the elite, current scholarship in the field has mounted solid arguments and has offered convincing answers which heavily rely on archival evidence and historical anecdotes that tell the story of what happens "below". Last but not least, they have sparked further debates related to methodological concerns about the life, manners, cultural artefacts, attitudes, beliefs, rites, ceremonies and recreations of the poor. It has scrutinised regional specificities and cultural variations in which gender plays an important role and has brought to light evidence of material and cultural history which attests to popular culture's own identity and consciousness in early modern England.

Sidebar

Dragoş Ivana is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Bucharest. He specializes in 18th-English literature, and his research interests include comparative literature, critical theory, intellectual history and city studies. Ivana is treasurer of the Romanian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and has published extensively on the reception of Cervantes in the 18th-century English novel, the novel of sensibility and popular culture in 18th-century England.

E-mail address: [email protected]

References

References

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