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

• Authors: Dragoș Ivana
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

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.

Keywords

EN

early modernity; popular culture; high culture; antiquarianism; orality; superstition; irrationality; literacy; politeness; cultural identity

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: American, British and Canadian Studies Journal
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 25
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 10-19

Dates

published

2015-12-01

online

2016-02-12

Contributors

author

Dragoș Ivana

• University of Bucharest

References

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• Brand, John. Observations on popular antiquities: chiefly illustrating the origin of our vulgar customs, ceremonies, and superstitions. Rev. by Henry Ellis. London: F. C. and D. Rivington, 1813. Print.
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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/abcsj-2015-0005