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Literature And Popular Culture In Early Modern England, Phebe Jensen

English Faculty Publications

"All students of popular culture," Tim Harris wrote in 1995, "would acknowledge the intellectual debt they owe to Peter Burke's seminal study Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe." (1) Now in a third edition with substantial revisions and a new preface, the book defines "popular culture" as the culture of "ordinary people," which included "folksongs and folktales; devotional images and decorated marriage chests; mystery plays and farces; broadsides and chapbooks; and, above all, festivals...." Burke's central claim was that in 1500, the elite were culturally "amphibious," participating in this popular "little tradition" but also in the "great tradition" of the …