Awards

• Winner of Katharine Briggs Folklore Award 2000.
• Winner of Whitfield Prize 2000.
• Winner of Winner of the Royal Historical Society's Whitfield Prize, 2000 Winner of the Folklore Society's Katharine Briggs Award, 2001.
• Winner of Winner of the Whitfield Prize for 2000, winner of the Folklore Society's Katharine Briggs Award for 2000 and shortlisted for the Longman/History Today Prize.

Overview

"This book explores the varied vernacular forms and rich oral traditions which were such a part of popular culture in early modern England. It focuses, in particular, upon dialect speech and proverbial wisdom, ""old wives' tales"" and children's lore, historical legends and local customs, scurrilous versifying and scandalous rumour-mongering. Adam Fox argues that while the spoken word provides the most vivid insight into the mental world of the majority in this semi-literate society, it was by no means untouched by written influences. Even at the beginning of the period, centuries of reciprocal infusion between complementary media had created a cultural repertoire which had long ceased to be purely oral. Thereafter, the expansion of literacy together with the proliferation of texts both in manuscript and print saw the rapid acceleration and elaboration of this process. By 1700 popular traditions and modes of expression were the product of a fundamentally literate environment to a much greater extent than has yet been appreciated."

Full Product Details

9780198205128

Table of Contents

Reviews

This is a delightful book which will both impress the academic specialist and enthral the general reader. Literature & History A stimulating account of the fabric of lived experience across England in the early modern period. Years Work in English Studies Fox's encyclopaedic knowledge of the period and his keen sense of the connections between different cultural milieus has resulted in a masterpiece that thoroughly reorders some of the most basic categories through which we study the past. In its totalizing sweep and remarkable archival richness, it begs comparison with Religion and the Decline of Magic and The Stripping of the Altars, and in many ways it does for social history what those books did for the history of religious belief. Reformation Rarely has a book of early modern English history so thoroughly conveyed the impression that the author has read every source produced in the England of that time ... tour de force. Reformation This densely researched book is another rich contribution to the growing analysis of popular culture within a complex area which is difficult for the historian to retrieve - early modern England. Fox has meticulously drawn upon a wide range of fascinating sources ... this is a book to provoke thought and open up new avenues of historical awareness. Social History Society Bulletin Exhilarating ... Adam Fox has written a most illuminating and thought-provoking account of this important subject, illustrated with an immense number of telling, pertinent and memorable examples. English Historical Review This compelling study explores the interaction between speech, script and print ... Adam Fox's account of early modern English oral culture combines penetrating analysis with celebration of that culture's vigour, diversity, and inventiveness. English Historical Review Painstaking research in many types of sources enables Fox to tell us far more than we might have thought it possible to know about the permeation of text into popular culture and the contribution of oral tradition to publication and print. Times Literary Supplement

This is a delightful book which will both impress the academic specialist and enthral the general reader. Literature & History A stimulating account of the fabric of lived experience across England in the early modern period. Years Work in English Studies Fox's encyclopaedic knowledge of the period and his keen sense of the connections between different cultural milieus has resulted in a masterpiece that thoroughly reorders some of the most basic categories through which we study the past. In its totalizing sweep and remarkable archival richness, it begs comparison with Religion and the Decline of Magic and The Stripping of the Altars, and in many ways it does for social history what those books did for the history of religious belief. Reformation Rarely has a book of early modern English history so thoroughly conveyed the impression that the author has read every source produced in the England of that time ... tour de force. Reformation This densely researched book is another rich contribution to the growing analysis of popular culture within a complex area which is difficult for the historian to retrieve - early modern England. Fox has meticulously drawn upon a wide range of fascinating sources ... this is a book to provoke thought and open up new avenues of historical awareness. Social History Society Bulletin Exhilarating ... Adam Fox has written a most illuminating and thought-provoking account of this important subject, illustrated with an immense number of telling, pertinent and memorable examples. English Historical Review This compelling study explores the interaction between speech, script and print ... Adam Fox's account of early modern English oral culture combines penetrating analysis with celebration of that culture's vigour, diversity, and inventiveness. English Historical Review Painstaking research in many types of sources enables Fox to tell us far more than we might have thought it possible to know about the permeation of text into popular culture and the contribution of oral tradition to publication and print. Times Literary Supplement

This is one of those rare history books that will change the way in which you think about the past. You might have imagined that the ordinary conversations, sayings, stories and songs of the majority of men, women and children in history would have been lost in the mists of time. Until relatively recently, most people could not write and much of what they said was never thought worthy of recording. But in this brilliantly imaginative and massively learned book Fox manages to bring the dim and distant voices back to life. In his pages you can hear sounds of the world which Shakespeare knew: the dialects, the proverbs, the jokes. You can eavesdrop on the gossip of the marketplace of Tudor and Stuart England, learn the bawdy songs chorused about the great and the good, or sit in on the evening firesides and listen to the legends and tales, ballads and nursery rhymes that were at the heart of popular culture. This is one of the most original, vivid and fascinating works of non-fiction that you will read in a long time and is surely destined to become a classic. (Kirkus UK)

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